Rewriting The Meaning

By Malkie Gordon Hirsch Magence

“It’s not your life that’s the problem, but the meaning you attach to it.”—Tony Robbins

When I heard that line this morning with my coffee, tears instantly sprang to my eyes. I was in the middle of editing a different piece I wrote for this week but hearing his message was too inspirational to shelve for another week. I quickly wrote a personal message on how his words resonated with me and I hope it’s something you can connect to as well, and benefit from the message appropriate for the Chanukah season and life in general.

Sometimes we don’t even get to choose our feelings about something, because that something chooses us.

Life throws an experience into your lap, and without warning, you’re left with the work of deciding what this moment means—whether it will make you feel unworthy of good things, mistrustful of people, or disconnected from the idea that G-d ultimately wants the best for us.

It’s so easy to interpret life’s challenges as a slap on the wrist, as if we’re children being punished for something we’ve done wrong.

But that’s not how G-d works. I’m no gadol, and I’m certainly not tapped into the secrets of the universe, but I do know from what I’ve lived through that G-d doesn’t mirror human behavior.

He doesn’t retaliate. He doesn’t punish to hurt. And He doesn’t take away because of spite.

Some things that happen in life will stay unexplained forever and that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person who deserves bad things.

It means there’s a message hidden in the corners of the challenge, and you get to choose what you take from it. Not everyone does.

Many people live and die never discovering the gift buried inside the pain.

The Holocaust is the clearest example. Generations of Jews witnessed horror upon horror, inflicted by people who chose hatred over humanity. The trauma didn’t end when the war did; it seeped into the next generation through silence, fear, and survival-mode living.

My grandparents never had the tools or language to unpack what they endured.

They didn’t talk about it, but it shaped them. My grandmother lived her entire life believing she wasn’t blessed to have survived. She believed she had simply been spared.

That mindset doesn’t just color certain moments; it rewrites the entire script of a person’s life.

When my late husband passed away suddenly and I was left with five kids and a house full of grief, I didn’t assume it was the result of something I had done wrong.

I was devastated, shattered in a way I didn’t know was possible. It took months of sleepless nights and countless tears before I realized that the only closure I might ever receive would have to come from within me.

I had to believe that just as tragedy can reshape a life in a single second, so too can blessings.

So too can joy.

So too can a new chapter you never saw coming. I didn’t lose faith; I gained it. I didn’t get angry; I became certain that this wasn’t the end of my story. I was still here. My kids were still here.

And they deserved a beautiful life with a stepfather who stepped in when Moshe had to step out.

We’re so quick to conclude that when things don’t go the way we planned, it must mean we’re undeserving of love or luck or happiness.

But maybe what needs to change is not what happens to us but the meaning we attach to it.

When the script veers sharply in a direction we never expected, maybe our job is to embrace it, to look for the light in the dark, to find new meaning in places we never thought to look.

Chanukah reminds us of this exact truth.

In a time of war, fear, and impossible odds, the Maccabees didn’t win because the circumstances made sense. They won because they believed anything was possible.

Because they didn’t attach despair to their story, even when all the evidence pointed that way. Because they lit one small flame in the darkness and G-d made it shine for eight days.

The miracles of Chanukah didn’t happen after everything was perfect. They happened because everything wasn’t.

And maybe that’s the message we need today:

Even when life feels like it’s veering off course… even when we don’t understand the chapter we’re in… even when the world feels heavy… miracles can still happen.

Not after the storm—but right in the middle of it.

Anything is possible.

That’s the message I take from Chanukah and more broadly, from life. n

Malkie Gordon Hirsch Magence is a native of the Five Towns community, a mom of five, a writer, and a social media influencer.