Oy-kay (ish)!

We wind up with so many magnets. The kind that come free with camp registration or takeout orders, or the extra candle-lighting times magnets from schools and shuls we support. They end up scattered across the fridge, the side of the washing machine, or buried in the junk drawer with the twist-ties and half a roll of scotch tape.

I’ve had ideas over the years to reuse them, but like too many of my best ideas, they got outpaced by laundry, carpools, and other to-dos.

Then one day, while sorting through my son’s LEGO collection to restore some semblance of order, I found three Scrabble tiles: O, K, and Y.

(We don’t even own a Scrabble game. So how they got here is one of those classic mysteries of family life, alongside “Who took the scissors?” and “Where did all the Shabbos socks go?”)

But those letters sparked something. Not only can they form fun words—YO, OK, OY, and KO—but they also work as a kind of rating system for your day:

• YO! A day that exceeded expectations. A friend calls with good news, someone brings over soup, or you actually remember everything on your grocery list.
• OK. Dinner got made, everyone is more or less upright, and you got five whole minutes alone before someone asked you where the charger is.
• OY. The washing machine overflowed, the soup burned, and the container in the fridge turned out to be from last Shavuos.
• KO. (Knocked Out.) One of those days when every little thing feels like too much.

So, with a pair of scissors and a little rubber cement, I mounted the letters onto pieces of one of those random magnets and turned it into a little daily mood board. Totally unnecessary. Also totally delightful.

Later, it occurred to me that this goofy little magnet game is actually a good practice in something the Torah encourages us to develop: an ayin tov, a good eye. When we train ourselves to look at things with an ayin tov, we start seeing possibilities instead of problems. We reframe.

An OY day might still be hard—but we notice the help we got anyway, and it turns into a YO. A KO day can become an OK one, just by recognizing that we got through.

Having an ayin tov is not about pretending everything’s great when it’s not. It’s about choosing to see the good that is there. Rav Avigdor Miller, ztz”l, used to say that gratitude begins with noticing, and noticing begins with deciding to look.

Even extra magnets can be reminders.

Today’s rating? I’m going with OK, with moments of YO—thanks to an ayin tov.

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