If you’ve made it to these words and are seeing them, you may want to ask yourself how it all came to pass. Where do you hang out so that you have access to it? Has it been something you were searching for, naturally arrived at, or just by happenstance? The fact that you have stopped to focus on these few lines already proves one thing: you have the ability to focus.

I would argue that the biggest cause for losing focus is access to other things. For example, a person who wishes to get over an addiction, whatever that addiction may be, will have a harder time remaining loyal to the goal of leaving it behind if that person still has access to the very thing they are trying to escape. The door isn’t completely closed as long as you still hold the key in your hand.

I’ve heard someone say that air is the deadliest addiction, since science has proven that anyone who has removed themselves from it for just a few minutes has died. I would argue that this is only because the context of addiction is usually used when it produces a detriment, whereas air accomplishes great benefit. But think about it. It truly doesn’t make a difference what it is. If we are constantly drawn to it by a force stronger than our will, we are living an addiction of sorts. Maybe not a bad one, but the properties of addiction take the reins.

Someone who is madly in love with another won’t see the obvious, as the Midrash (Bereishit Rabah, Va’era 55:8) states, “Love spoils the ordinary.” The power of addiction is that when the mind reawakens to this thought, the heart instantaneously goes into overdrive and fuels plans to achieve this desire. All kinds of tactics seem acceptable to the mind of the infatuated, and nothing will stand in the way of this burning will. Except........

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