There’s this short story we had to read for some kind of class in school called Coffee.

Though I read it so many years ago, I never forgot it because I see it happen over and over again.
The story goes like this:
A young couple lives in the country, a short walk from the local store. One morning they wake up to find they’ve run out of coffee.

One insists, “You go buy the coffee.”
The other says, “You go get the coffee”

And from there, out of nowhere, they start dredging up all past wrongs and hurts.

They fight furiously the entire morning.

Until, as I remember it, the husband finally decides to go to the store and buy coffee.
When he comes back home they each make a cup, or maybe two.
They sip in silence, wondering how they ever got to this dark and selfish place, each one wanting to shut that forbidden door forever and to pretend they never saw what horrors lie beyond it.
I call this phenomenon “Minus 1.”
Why? Because I was once in a hospital with a friend whose son was in a potentially fatal situation. He was getting treatments on the eighth floor of the hospital, a floor with balloons and coffee machines. With clowns and brightly painted walls.
One day, the boy needed some kind of scan that was only done on the lower, underground floors of the hospital.
We pressed the Minus 1 button, descended, and got off the elevator.

But, something was wrong.

We were on the wrong floor, a scary floor where the ceilings don’t try to cover up their open wires, and the walls are unpainted cement blocks.
We quickly rushed back to the elevator to get back to those safe and familiar painted walls and lighted ceilings.
I think that every day, at some point, we go to or touch that “lower floor.”

We press the wrong button within ourselves, or within another, and expose a trait or behavior that’s scary, raw, and unpainted.

Most times it’s a passing event, a fleeting moment.

Someone told me a story this week about road rage. A man pulls over to give someone directions on the side of the road. The driver of the car behind him doesn’t like this, so he slams on his brakes, pulls up behind the two cars, gets out, and sticks his fist into one of their windows, and bangs on their car door for a good five minutes. Then he drives off.
Other times it goes further.
Moshe Rabbeinu hits the rock. In this split second when he is momentarily exposed, and he hears and sees that place of temporary open faithlessness, he loses his chance to lead us into the land. Loses it by losing his patience and compassion, the very reasons he was chosen to lead us into Eretz Yisrael.

There is a story I heard just this week about two people who worked together in interior decorating for years and years. One day, one answers the phone and gets offered some unbelievable job.  She pretends she works alone. Has no partner. Meanwhile it was the other partner who had actually started the business.
Every so often we get these close-up glimpses into the never-satiated, fiery, coal-swallowing furnace of the selfish soul.
At some time we all go there.
It’s a scary place, where our wires are exposed, and walls unpainted.
But, don't stay there. Jump up, don’t look back, and get out of that level in the soul, the level I call Minus 1.