I’m In A City That Celebrates Poison

I'm here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Going to check out what many consider to be one of the best views in America. Let's go see if they're right. Welcome to the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I'm standing here on Mount Washington overlooking one of the most spectacular city views in America. Three rivers, bridges everywhere, skyscrapers right out of the valley. Now, when you think of beautiful cities, you probably think of San Francisco or New York or Seattle, but Pittsburgh probably not the first city that comes to mind, but standing up here, it's hard to understand why. And what's even more incredible is that this gorgeous city was once the industrial capital of America. This was the city of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick and some of the wealthiest businessmen in American history. Steel mills, coal furnaces, factories, railroads. Pittsburgh was producing the steel that built America's bridges and skyscrapers and railroads. The city was making people very very rich. But here's something absolutely unbelievable. You see this incredible view behind me? There was a time where you could stand right in this exact spot that I'm standing right now in the middle of the day and barely see any of the view. Not because of clouds, not because of fog, because of smoke. You see, in the early 1900s, Pittsburgh was so polluted by its steel mills and coal-burning industries that the skies would sometimes turn almost completely black. You had street lights that had to be turned on in the middle of the day. People would put on a clean shirt in the morning and they'd arrive at work and it was covered in soot. Buildings turned black, windows were coated with grime, and the air that people were breathing was completely filled with smoke and soot and harmful particles. But here's the craziest part. For years, many people actually celebrated the smoke because smoke meant that the furnaces were churning and they were burning. Smoke meant the factories were working and people were making money. Smoke meant jobs and production and money and prosperity. A smokestack pumping black smoke clouds into the sky wasn't necessarily seen as a problem. It was a symbol of success. The more smoke, the more business. The more business, the more money. The more money, the better. Except for one little problem. The very smoke they were was slowly poisoning the air they breathed. And eventually, Pittsburgh had to confront a pretty painful truth, that you could have all the steel, all the factories, all the money in the world. But what good was building the richest city in America at the time if you were making it completely miserable and unhealthy to live in? Over the following decades, Pittsburgh began fighting its smoke problem, introducing pollution controls, changing its fuel use, and eventually transforming the city's air into what it is today. And look at this. Pretty amazing, absolutely gorgeous. But standing here, I can't help but think, how many of us are still living in the old Pittsburgh? Think about it. You have a business and it's booming. You're expanding, you're hiring, you're opening new locations, you're making connections, you're making more money than you ever dreamed possible. Everyone's congratulating you. You get tremendous Look at you. What a success. But you don't have time to learn as much as you did anymore. You barely make it to a minyan. Your davening has become a race against the clock. Your is sort of gasping for air, but look at all that smoke. Hey, maybe you're involved in Okay, incredible You're running a giant organization, raising money and helping families and arranging events, and people are calling you, and you're at But your own wife, she hasn't had a real conversation with you in weeks or maybe months. Your children are growing up while you're busy saving everyone else's children. And everyone keeps congratulating you on the incredible things that you're accomplishing. Look at all that smoke, they say. Or or maybe it's your hobbies, the trips, the gadgets, the sports, the entertainment, the vacations. You've become an expert at enjoying life. Your schedule is packed. You're having the time of your life. Except somewhere along the way, you stop making time for the things that actually give your life meaning, like your relationship with or your relationship with the people that you love, or your own inner world. And all the while, you're celebrating how busy and successful and exciting your life has become. But what if the very things we're using to measure our success are the things that slowly are suffocating our You know, famously, who's wealthy? The person who's happy with his portion. Because wealth isn't just about how much you've accumulated, it's about whether what you've accumulated is actually making your life richer. Pretty simple. If your success is costing you your or your marriage, or your children, or your peace of mind, it's maybe time to ask whether you're really becoming rich or you're just building a bigger smokestack. For generations, Pittsburgh looked at its smokestacks and saw success, and it's years for the city to recognize that some of what it was celebrating was actually hurting it. Today you can stand up here and see for miles, and maybe that's the lesson. Sometimes we become so proud of what we're producing that we stop noticing what we're destroying. So take a look at the smoke in your own life, the things that you're so busy doing, the things everybody admires you for, the things that make you feel so successful, and ask yourself one question. Is this success giving my room to breathe, or am I so busy celebrating the smoke that I haven't noticed I'm choking on it?