There is an ancient story about a rabbi who had been slandered by someone in his village. A couple weeks later, this particular man had a change of heart. So he went to the rabbi and said, "Rabbi, what must I do to repair my sin?" The rabbi instructed him, "Get a pillow and go to the top of the hill outside of the village. Rip the pillow open and spread its feathers on the wind and return back to me."
The man quickly ran back to his home, grabbed the pillow from his bed, and did exactly as he was told by the rabbi.
Later, he returned to the rabbi and explained that he had done everything he was told. The rabbi then said, "There is one task remaining: go and find all of the feathers that came out of the pillow, collect them, and bring them back to me."
The man looked at the rabbi and gasped, "That's impossible!"
The rabbi, slowly lifted his eyes to meet the man's, responding to his sudden exasperation,"Yes. It is impossible for you to re-gather those feathers, just as it is impossible for you to repair the harm that your slander has worked on me."
We have this story where something happens to this rabbi and it hurts. This guy comes back and wants to fix everything and what doesn't happen is we don't see the rabbi say, "Oh, its no big deal, don't worry about it." For some reason the rabbi can't just shove this to the side. But it is more than him just choosing not to, it is that he can't. Because the rabbi understands that there are some things that can't be undone.
This is simply the reality of how the world works.
You can't put the pillow back together again.
