As the story goes President Harry Truman pleaded: “Give me a one-handed economist. All my economists say ‘on the one hand . . .’, then ‘but on the other . . .’” Sometimes we want opinions and other times we want direction.

I was thinking about this when reading Re’eh- See, this week’s Torah portion. There we read:

See, this day I set before you blessing and curse: blessing, if you obey the commandments of your God Lord that I enjoin upon you this day; and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of your God Lord, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon you this day and follow other gods, whom you have not experienced.

Deuteronomy 11:26-28

On one side there is a blessing and on the other side a curse. It seems that this might be direction, but probably for most of this this is experienced as options. Far too often we are not deliberating between good and bad, but between something and nothing or short term vs long term benefit. The path is rarely simple when it actually matters. I have a feeling I am not the only one who gets stuck in this place.

This is profoundly similar to the Avraham’s situation at the Akedah, binding of his son Yitzhak. God told him to sacrifice his beloved son. Just as Avraham is about to go through with it an Angel tell him not to do it. Is this message the truth or just an interpretation. We would like to think the direction if obvious, but it seems that he has options. Should he go through with it? What is he to do? There we read:

When Avraham looked up, his eye fell upon a ram, caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son.

Genesis 22:13

Avraham did not know which authority to follow. He did not turn his head to “either to the right or to the left “. He lifts his head and he sees a ram caught in the thicket. In the ram he sees himself. Will he go to the right or to the left? Will he follow the blessing or the curse? Will he lift his head and see another path through the situation? We all get stuck between A and B. We do not always find a way to back up, analyze, and make a plan C. To live a life of blessing we cannot deviate from the path, but as we see there are often options even if all we seek is direction. Some times the only real direction is to back up, get unstuck, and relook at the situation. This is what is mean to have vision.

• See similar post Beyond Just Right and Left: On the Authority of Law