Yesterday I was in Manhattan and on my way to lunch at a fabulous restaurant, I passed a traffic cop at Broadway and Thirty Fourth Street. Now, I've always thought that of all the jobs a police officer could have, directing traffic was probably the worst. It's not exciting, and if it's bad weather, you're still stuck outside. I had decided that the directing traffic job was given to rookies or those that had somehow 'deserved it' as no one else would want it.

Well, this young police officer was directing traffic like it was the passion of his life! He was having fun with it - saying pleasantries to the people passing by, yelling 'happy birthday' to someone passing with a bunch of balloons, and making mock salutes at the police cars that would drive by. Everything he did was with positive energy and - well - happiness. Here's a guy who loves what he does.

And while it surprised me, it shouldn't have. There is an old Jewish proverb that says, "Who is the rich man? He who is happy with what he has."

Somehow - probably just because that's the way my brain works - it reminded me of this story. This is the epilogue from The Seventh Day: Soldiers’ Talk About The Six-Day War

It was before the outbreak of the Six-Day War. The battalion was stationed in the Negev along the old border. It was terribly hot, and water was rationed, so we were all covered with dust and filthy dirty from the maneuvers. We were only waiting to be given a chance to lie down and doze off in our pup tents. I shared my tent with a reservist, a man older than most of us, who had nevertheless stood up well to the tough conditions. As evening fell he amazed me by pulling out of his rucksack two sheets, laundered and ironed. I couldn’t help smiling as I watched him spread them out, but then he started speaking – quietly and sadly: “Everywhere I’ve been for years now I’ve taken sheets with me – ever since the Second World War. I worked in a laundry then, washing sheets for German soldiers. There weren’t any sheets in our ghetto… yet every day we washed sheets for them. I swore an oath then that if I got out of it all alive, I ‘d always sleep on a clean sheet.” And so saying, he lay down between the sheets and fell asleep.