Today I learned (the hard way, and expensive way) about brake calipers.
An interesting thing: Two opposite problems were solved with the same fix! The car was neither braking nor accelerating properly.
Why? The calipers had frozen or seized up, remaining enough in place to keep the car from accelerating normally, making acceleration extra laborious, but also not closing in tight enough for the brake pads to fully stop the rotors. They were frozen/seized in an in-between place, neither here nor there, neither fully engaged not disengaged. They were stuck halfway there.
Nu, what’s the life lesson?
1) One lesson is maybe a parenting one, or relevant in any relationship. The ability to smoothly transition (& not get stuck & fixated) between closeness & distance, between being supportive & stepping back and giving space, between allowing for open freedom & setting up healthy guideposts, boundaries and constraints.
2) Another thing. You know usually we think of compromises as meeting halfway or somewhere in the middle. But that’s terrible when it comes to brake calipers. The desired state for calipers is to be able to both go all the way in & all the way out, to pivot easily to both extremes. That’s another form of flexibility. Sometimes that’s the type of flexibility that’s needed.
3) There’s a Talmud expression (that rhymes in the original): Just as one receives reward for expounding an interpretation, so too, one can merit reward by withdrawing that interpretation. Sometimes the wisdom is to know when to engage and when to disengage, when to invest of ourselves vs. when to remove ourselves from a situation. There is value in speaking up and there can also be value in silence. Just as the caliper has to push in and have the brake pads hug the turning rotor to make it stop or slow, so too, a properly working brake caliper knows when to get out of the way, let things be, give it room.
4) In our case, the car could still accelerate, but far more laboriously, it was a real struggle. You could tell it on the RPM dial on the dashboard. The engine was much more heavily invested that it usually would be for a mere 30 miles an hour. We didn’t realize it but we were simply fighting the half-engaged brake pads. It made everything harder.
And that’s our lesson #4 from our expensive fix of the brake calipers, pads AND rotors: Some people are working twice or triple as hard to get the same results, because something is holding them back or crimping their style. Some people are carrying a much heavier load, or being held back or dealing with extra pressures that we know nothing about. Like the biblical verse about adjusting the donkey’s load, whenever possible, if we can help other people lighten or modify their personal load, we can help them get ahead faster, better, easier than if all that is holding them back and weighing them down. We can’t always help with these type of load adjustments from the outside, but sometimes we can.
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Maybe not the life-lesson I am looking for, it’s not exactly this point, but the first thing that came to mind is a line in Vyadaya Moskve by Rebbe #Rashab, re the Tzimtzum (& the teacher-student parable) which both reveals & conceals, but if not for the conceal wouldn’t be able to reveal. The acceleration and braking can be very much related, and resolved by the same fix!