Transcript
Good morning Boker Tov, welcome back to Living with Emuna. As always, we express our great gratitude to our sponsors on the series for the year, Doctors Avi and Bella Morgan in memory of Rabbi Doctor Brian Galbut and in memory of Bella's mother, Doctor Ellen Schanzer. Tremendous gratitude. Also, those who've not yet signed up, please sign up for our one and one campaign in the merit of Esty Moskowitz, our beloved little Esty Moskowitz, wishing her a speedy Refuah Shleimah among all those who are ill. A dollar a day of giving and a minute a day of learning. It's as simple as that. You could act in the merit and give her a complete, please God, Refuah Shleimah. All it takes is one and one, one dollar a day of giving and one minute a day of learning. You could join at brsonline.org/the number one, A-N-D, one, one and one, brsonline.org/one and one. The dollar a day is through Daily Giving, partnering with Doctor Donath of Daily Giving. BRS are not recipients of this money. It's not a ploy for us to raise money from you, but rather it is a platform for all of us to be able to give a dollar a day to a diverse group of tzedakas, really beautiful, worthwhile charities. A dollar a day of giving and join a WhatsApp group that's 60 seconds a day of learning. All of us have one dollar a day, all of us have one minute a day. It can be in her merit and the merit of others. So please go on brsonline.org/one and one. Okay, back to Simcha. We've been talking about happiness. Happiness is the foundation for life, a meaningful life, a rich life, a happy life. Happiness is the driver. It gives us the serenity and the peace, it gives us the space and the peace of mind to be able to be our best selves. If we don't have a Simchas Hachaim, we don't have a joy for life, if we're not happy, what else do we have? So I want to share with you, I love to share the emails that come in. Please keep sending them if you have a great Emuna story, a story about happiness, how it changed your life, please let me know. Someone writes, "Hi Rabbi Goldberg, hope all's well. Thank you for your shiurim, blah blah blah blah blah. I know Rabbi likes Emuna stories, I thought I'd share one. Last year when I was graduating, I had a very hard time finding a job because of the pandemic. Company after company was rejecting me, even small companies and jobs that I thought I was qualified for. I was rejected by over 150 jobs." Can you imagine? That's a lot of jobs to be rejected by. That is a lot of rejection. One could feel very dejected. He writes, "One day I noticed on LinkedIn that the NBA was looking for an accounting intern. I thought, why would the NBA hire me when all these other places are rejecting me? But what do I have to lose? Lo and behold, I got the job. That shows me the keys of parnassa are in Hashem's hands. This job gives me a big name on my resume and enough flexibility I could get a master's, study the CPA. If I got one of those other jobs, I wouldn't have been able to do all this. Looking back, Hashem really set me up in a position of success. In that moment, it was hard to see why things were going poorly, but looking back, I see the bigger picture and why I didn't receive any of those earlier jobs." Really amazing story. So he has the benefit, the person who signs in, who did not give me permission to use his name, but he has the benefit of being able to look back and make sense of it. We don't always have that. Sometimes we're rejected 150 times. 150 jobs, 150 girls or guys, 150 attempts at whatever breakthrough we're trying to achieve. And sometimes we don't see later on why it needed to happen, but often we do. Your antenna has to be extended. He could have just gotten the job and said, "Oh, great, Baruch Hashem, I have a job, let's go." He chose to pause and look back and say, "Now I understand why I didn't get those other jobs. Those other jobs would not have afforded me the opportunity I have now with this job." So just a great Emuna story. It reminds us and gives us that faith to live our lives. Hashem is in charge, He's in control, He holds the keys. Let go and let God, get out of the way and let Him do His thing. And everything that happens for us is for a reason. I think we talked about last week, Thomas Edison, he didn't fail once. He invented the light bulb. It was just a process that had a lot of steps to it. But he never failed once. So he got a job and he wasn't rejected once. It was just a search that took 150 steps to be able to get the job that was meant for him. And that was number one. Number two, before we dive back into Bayam Derechecha, I want to share with you, I get an email with interesting facts. If you're a rabbi, you're always looking for drasha material. So any email which can come into your inbox which has the gift of drasha material, you gratefully have, and I will not tell you what it's called because I don't want any of you to get it. But anyway, it had the following, it had the following fascinating insight and I thought how perfect. You know, we've spoken a lot about happiness is not an emotion, happiness is a decision. Spoken a lot about that. In Yiddishkeit, that's what we believe. שמחה שם מוח שם מוח. Where you put your brain, where you put your thoughts, where you put your mind, that's what determines your happiness. If you focus on what you have, not what's missing. If you focus on the good, not the bad. If you focus on the pleasure, not the pain. It's all a question of what we're looking at, what we choose to focus on. We are the arbiters of our own... of our happiness. Happiness is not an emotion, it is a decision that we make. Again, we're not talking about people with clinical depression or unhappiness or anxiety, that is not a decision, that is something that needs support. And we're not talking about a person who's mourning or grieving, who just experienced loss. That someone sitting shiva should not choose to focus on what they should be happy about. We're not focused on that either, we've spoken at length about it. We're talking about the average person on the average day. When you wake up in the morning, do you think about what hurts? Do you let out a krechtz and a groan and a moan about what's missing? Or do you think about what works and what feels great and do you feel a sense of simcha? It is a decision, it is not an emotion. We've also spoken about the micro muscles in our face that those micro muscles are connected to the chemicals that our brain releases and impacts our feeling. Remember we talked about a while ago, I gave you all the homework, I guess everybody stopped doing it, which was to smile. Wake up every day and smile, because it turns out it's not that when you're happy you smile, but when you smile you're happy. So this article says we have to fear and worry and be careful about the opposite. It turns out, it turns out that you may want to wear sunglasses if you want to be happy. Why do you need to wear sunglasses to be happy? I don't get any cut, no Ray-Bans, I'm not a stakeholder or a shareholder, not looking to make money off of the sunglasses, but why do sunglasses make you happy? So listen to this, very interesting. Being frustrated, grumpy is part of life, hopefully a temporary and short-lived aspect of our existence. But we've all been there, and when we are, it's often an emotion that others can see just by looking at the frown on our faces. We purse our lips, scrunch our foreheads, furrow our eyebrows, and as a result narrow our eyes. It's pretty basic example of cause and effect. Being upset causes us to make that face, or in other words, our face is reacting to our emotion, which is a very Jewish Torah idea. How do you say face in Hebrew? How do you say what's happening inside? Panim? Your panim reveals your pnim. Your face reveals what's happening inside. You wear it on your face, you wear it on your sleeve, your panim reveals your pnim. When we look towards the sun on a bright sunny day, our faces tend to do the same thing. We squint our eyes to limit the amount of sunlight that we're taking in, in part so that we can see where we're going. That causes us to raise our cheeks and drop our eyebrows, which in turn leads to scrunched foreheads and pursed lips. We're not unhappy, we're just trying to keep the sun out of our eyes, but it might not matter, we are effectively frowning. According to a 2014 study, that's enough to make us grumpy. Research surveyed 137 females age 18 to 40, 145 males 18 to 39, who were hanging out at the beach. The groups were split between those wearing sunglasses and those not. Some walked with the sun behind and others with it in front. Participants were asked to take a brief survey about their emotional state without being told why, and the results were hardly sunny. Those against the sun reported more aggressiveness than those wearing sunglasses or those with the sun behind. And this happened despite the majority of participants reporting being unaffected by the sunlight. The authors concluded self-reported aggressiveness bore direct relation to the extent of their irritation from the sun in their eyes. What's happening? It seems like our brains are reverse cause and effect. When we're upset we frown, but when we have to deflect the glare of the sun we also frown, and our brain assumes that frown is because we're upset. And if our brain says we're upset, it's the boss, we get grumpy. As Smithsonian notes, that shouldn't be surprising. The idea that your facial expression can secretly change your mood is new. Previous studies suggested that even things like Botox can make you feel happier because you're being forced to smile all the time. That is not a justification, it's not an argument, and the idea that frowning is related to the sun isn't new either. Charles Darwin noticed the way that frowning helped to shade the eyes, curry, whatever. So if you want to keep the grumps away, there's an easy way: put on some sunglasses, shield your eyes from the sun, keeping your forehead relaxed, and your mood just where it needs to be. I read that I thought it was very interesting that if looking at the sun makes you frown, and then that makes you feel down, then the opposite is also true. When you force yourself to smile, it releases the endorphins and the chemicals that make you feel happy. So I am giving that homework assignment again, we're bringing it back, which is to start the day and throughout the day, put a reminder on your phone if you have to, set the alarm to remind you to smile for no reason. Now if you're at a funeral, first of all turn the alarm off, but also don't start smiling randomly in the middle of the funeral. But you know, in the appropriate place and at the appropriate time, smile, smile. Don't wait to be happy to smile, smile and you will be happy, and when you're happy, the whole world smiles with you. So we've been learning all about the source of happiness when we are incomplete and lacking and missing, what makes us feel whole is by attaching ourselves to the one who's the most whole, which is the Ribbono Shel Olam, which is Hashem, by linking into him, by riding his coattail so to speak, by connecting or riding the Hashem wave of the world, then we're able to feel. Whatever happens is the way it's meant to be. Whatever happens is the way it's meant to be. This is it. It's possible I was in bed the other night when one of my children called me because they had hit a curb and a piece of the car had fallen down and they couldn't drive and I had to get out of bed and go meet them and help them and I reminded myself the whole way there in the middle of the night why were they out and about that's an excellent question but I reminded myself the whole way there it's what's meant to be Hashem wanted the bumper to be hanging off and he wanted you to have to go home and get a screwdriver and come back again a second time and not have enough sleep then that's what he wanted so you can start getting all I'm not saying which one I'm not saying who yeah but rhymes with I'm not saying and I love them as much as the others just not as much that night so I'm not saying who but I started to feel angry and anxious and upset and disappointed and all these legitimate we would say legitimate emotions but they would have robbed that interaction and created friction with that child and made it hard to fall asleep that night and ruined the rest of the week instead you take a couple deep breaths and you say buddy you're the guy teaching the emuna shiur just you got to practice what you preach so what's the answer it's from Hashem כל מן דעביד רחמנא לטב עביד everything Hashem does is for a reason now that doesn't mean the child shouldn't be more careful in the future doesn't mean it shouldn't come out of her bat mitzvah money it doesn't mean that men it doesn't mean that there aren't consequences but it means that whatever consequences there are whatever file you have to claim you have to file whatever you have to do you do it with a smile because it was what was meant to be because if Hashem didn't want it to happen it wouldn't have happened if he wanted her to see that curb if he wanted it to not have an impact on the car if he wanted it to not be hanging down if he wanted all those other things then it wouldn't have happened if it happened it happens for a reason so we learn and we are accountable and we correct our mistakes but while we do it we're not brought down which is exactly what Rav Itche Meir's been telling us the yetzer hara works because it tries to knock us down it tries to bring us down it tries to convince us we're unworthy we're incapable it tries to get us angry or anxious it tries to get us to lose our cool or rage it tries to get us to react in ways which will sabotage our own success so the people around us are not acting the way we want the way we wish they're not making the decisions that conform with what we dream for them we do the best we can to convince them we try to be as compelling and persuade them we do the best that we can to react to them with thoughtfulness and strategically but we can't rob ourselves of our happiness and it can't make us not realize and believe that everything's for a reason it's all from above it's all from Hashem you could get rejected 150 times by 150 jobs by 150 prospective dates by 150 attempts to persuade someone you can keep on getting rejected but it's all for a reason and we can't let it bring us down smile and we'll find that we can be happy in the meantime I have us on page kuf nun tes 159 yeush meha'atid we've talked about when we get despondent and despair hopeless because of the past when we get brought down by the past I failed I came up short I was incomplete I didn't fulfill my mission I got angry at my children I reacted to my spouse I didn't achieve what I set out to do in whatever areas of healthy living in my healthy lifestyle or in my spiritual pursuit so the yetzer hara doesn't look at how far we went yetzer hara looks at how short we came and that's what it focuses on getting us to give up on going forward and we have to overcome that voice celebrate the small successes we talked about the micro mitzvos and the micro successes you have to celebrate the small victories ולפעמים היצר מכניס באדם מחשבות יאוש ועצבות and sometimes the yetzer hara this evil inclination this voice of self-sabotage sometimes its methodology the way it works is it tries to get us to be hopeless and to despair to be sad not about the past not because we came up short or failed but about ha'atid the future כגון שאומר לו מה יש לך להתחיל ללמוד הלא ממילא אין לך סיכוי לגמור ולהצליח it doesn't get us to focus on where we came up short or what went wrong in the past it gets us to give up hope in the future you have no hope what kind of future why bother why try why set this goal why have that conversation why revisit that relationship who it's never going to work או למה תתאמץ להתגבר על תאוה זו הלא ממילא לא תוכל לכבוש את התאוה לגמרי why are you trying to overcome that urge at a meeting recently with a group of guys who are fighting certain instinct and impulsiveness and compulsive behavior so the whole methodology of the yetzer hara works is okay so you don't look at that website you didn't look at that app you didn't watch that thing now but We all know you're going to again sometime. So you had the strength to turn the channel, you had the strength to x out, you had the strength to turn it off right now. But why bother? Because even if you turn it off right now, so tomorrow or next week or next month or next year, you're gonna be back here, it's gonna happen again, so why bother? Who are you fooling? Who are you kidding? Why give up the pleasure of this moment? And that can be true when we're trying to practice shmiras einayim, or we're trying to guard our eyes and only look at images which will elevate. It can be true when it comes to whatever other goal that we've set, whether it's health and wellness, eating and exercise, whether it's patience and love for others, whether it's generosity, whatever area, whether it's kavana, whether it's our davening or the brachos that we make. The yetzer hara works and he says, come on, you can't keep this up forever. You had a great shmoneh esrei. Siddur Snippets we're only up almost up to shmoneh esrei, we're going to do a big blitz, a big campaign, change your amidah one bracha at a time, we're almost up to the amidah. I'm very excited for it for myself, could use a little boost. So what's going to happen? You're about to daven. You take your three steps forward and you say this is it, this is my amidah, going to nail it, going to have kavana, going to concentrate for all 19 brachos. I got it. This is my shmoneh esrei. And then the yetzer hara kicks in and it says, who are you kidding? Never happened, never will happen, and even if it happens now, it's not going to happen tomorrow, you can't keep this up so don't bother now. That's the methodology of the yetzer hara. למה זה תתאמץ להכווין בתפילתך? Why are you trying to have kavana? הלא ממילא לא תצליח לכוון בכל התפילה? Why are you bothering for the first bracha of shmoneh esrei? You know your mind is going to wander by the third or fourth. You know you'll be in the supermarket or the gym, or you'll be thinking about your children or your in-laws, or you'll be thinking about the work you have to do or the email you have to respond to. You know by the third bracha of shmoneh esrei your mind is going to be taking you to what probably are your best thoughts of the whole day, but you're going to be somewhere else other than where you're meant to be. I keep a little I have little note cards I keep in my pocket and I have a pen, and whenever a thought comes to me throughout the day or at night, doesn't work in the shower, but during davening I write it down. Could be in the middle of shmoneh esrei and I have a great idea for the shiur, for the drasha, or I want to email or check in on someone, or I have a thought about something. I stop, I write it down, I get it out of my head so now I can concentrate. Because otherwise it takes up your brain, now is competing, your brain is conflicted, your brain is trying to and you know, the older you get and the more white you have in your beard, the harder it is to hold those memories. So you had a thought, and if you don't do something about it in that moment, it could be gone forever. So carry something so you can capture that thought and then you can get back to what you were doing. I do it, it may seem rude, I could be in the middle of conversation with someone, I say hold on one second, I write it down. So I want to concentrate fully on our conversation, this thought because of what we're talking about, if you're trying to be nice, or in general, this thought came to my head, I don't want it to be distracting me, and I don't want to be fighting to hold on to it while I'm talking to you. So let me capture it, let me write it down, and now I don't have to worry about it, it's there. So now I can fully be present in whatever else I'm meant to be doing, whether it's talking to someone or talking to him. Anyway, that's just an aside and it is a suggestion. So how does the yetzer hara work? Yetzer hara says, ah you can't keep this up. So you took upon yourself not to speak lashon hara. You know everyone chooses that hour, I take the 3 AM slot, not to speak lashon hara. Everyone chooses whatever they're working on. So are you really going to keep that up? So why bother now? You got some juicy good stuff and you want to tell it to someone. So you're fighting it. No, don't, don't give into that urge, don't say that thing. But then your yetzer hara kicks in it says you're just going to tell them later, you're just going to call them tomorrow, you can't keep this up, so you might as well do it now. והדרך לשכוח מהחשבונות האלו היא כמו שנתבאר בסעיף ב שצריך לא לחשוב אלא על עכשיו. And you know what the answer, the antidote is? You know what our power is? Our power is to be in the present. Our power is to be in the present. Don't get stuck in the past, it will debilitate and paralyze you. It'll beat you up and knock you down. It'll make you feel inadequate, it'll make you feel invisible. And don't get lost in the future, it's not yet here. Don't live some predetermined life, some fatalistic life. Don't get lost in your dreams and aspirations, they're not yet here. And don't get lost in your stresses and anxieties and worries, it's not yet here. All you have is the present. All there is is today, all there is is right now. All there is is this moment. That is the only moment that matters because that's all we have. That's all we have. So many people are living in the past, they forfeit the present. So many people are lost in the future, they forfeit the present. But the present is the only dimension we can live in, it's the only one we can impact, it's the only one that we have. And it's the way we overcome that yetzer hara. Yetzer hara, I don't care about yesterday, we came up... So yeah, I gotta take my father's car to the shop, to the Honda dealership, and I gotta replace the bumper, and maybe I gotta babysit a little bit to pay it off. Okay, that was yesterday, but I don't care about yesterday. So I wasn't paying attention, it wasn't my best self, it wasn't my best moment. So what? It was yesterday. Modeh ani, thank you Hashem for a new day. I've turned the page. It's a blank page, it's a new page. All I have is today. How am I going to fill my page today? How am I going to fill my page? What will it say today? What it said yesterday, it's yesterday. And what am I going to look at tomorrow's page? I'm not up to tomorrow yet. I can't influence tomorrow, I can't impact tomorrow. All we have is today. That is the answer, that is the antidote. Our power is to live in the present. That is how we overcome the Yetzer Hara. Yetzer says you're a gornisht because of yesterday, or you'll be a gornisht tomorrow, so give up on today. And our answer is: are you crazy? I don't know what will be tomorrow. And you know what about yesterday? But I have right now, I have today. כמו שכתוב היום אם בקולו תשמעו. It says in the Torah, Moshe Rabbeinu, Hashem says to us, היום אם בקולו תשמעו. Today, if you listen to my voice. ולהבין שאין קשר בין רגע אחד לשני. Our moments are disconnected from one another. They don't have to overlap and intersect. We're allowed to draw a line between them and say: that wasn't my most shining moment. You know when I just flew off the handle? You know when I just raged when I walked into the house because the toys were all over the floor and dinner wasn't ready yet and I'm in a bad mood because I had a bad day, and you know I flipped out because I walked in and the kid didn't say hello to me? That wasn't my best self. So everyone, let's try this again. We're going to take it from the top. I'm going to walk out the front door, I'm coming back in. Take it from the top. Ah, the fact that I just blew my lid a minute ago, I just... okay, so what? What does that have to do with right now? Every moment is a new moment. Every hour is a new hour, every day is a new day. And they don't have to be connected to create a narrative of what my life is. Our power is to be in the present. Our power is to embrace the right now, the here and now, and to overcome that Yetzer Hara that tries to get me stuck yesterday and the Yetzer Hara that tries to get me lost in tomorrow and to say: I'm not listening to either of you because all I'm living in is right now. My power is in the present. אין קשר בין רגע אחד לשני ובכל רגע שעושה מה שצריך לעשות הוא מתחבר להשם יתברך. You know what? Tomorrow I may fail again, and yesterday I fell on my face, but if right now I can stand strong, it's all worth it. If right now I have a shining moment, if right now I live a better or best self, if right now I make the right choice, do you know what that does to the cosmos? Do you know what that does to the universe? Do you know what that does to the world? We discussed on Behind the Bima last week with Rabbi Mark Wildes, my good friend, the founder of MJE Manhattan Jewish Experience. We discussed how you define success in outreach and Kiruv. It's a fascinating discussion. What's the value you put on outreach? What's the cost of acquiring a new observant Jew? It's an interesting question. What's the value, what's the cost, what's worth it, and how do you define success? So he invoked, what's the Chabad definition based on the Baal HaTanya, got a flurry of emails from Shluchim who weighed in, it was a fascinating discussion. I'm grateful for it, I'm grateful for the conversation, it was fascinating. If you didn't listen, it's worth listening. And so one of the, one of the possibilities based on the Tanya, based on very mystical thinking, is that every mitzvah is of inestimable value. Every mitzvah we do moves the cosmos, impacts the universe. You get a Jew to light candles, you get a Jew to put on tefillin. If they never did anything before and they never do anything after, but that moment of that mitzvah that they did, you have no idea what it does for this world. You don't know what it does for their soul, you don't know the merit that it brings down and what it does for this world. We tend to forget that because we live in this world where it's invisible. It's invisible. So we don't see, we can't connect those dots, we don't understand the impact. But we believe it does. The butterfly, what Rabbi Sacks, alav hashalom, called the butterfly effect of virtue. There's a butterfly effect in physics that a butterfly flaps its wings in Tunisia and there's a hurricane in South Florida. In the world of physics, they found that correlation. A butterfly flaps its wings halfway around the world and what it sets in motion through flapping its wings can lead to a tsunami in Thailand. In the world of physics, they found that correlation. So Rabbi Sacks took that expression, that turn, and coined the expression the butterfly effect of virtue. We have no idea when we flap our mitzvah wings. The little mitzvah you did. The little mitzvah you did to help another person, to care about, to notice another person. The little mitzvah you did to Hashem. So you concentrate on your first Bracha of the day. ברוך אתה ה' אלוהינו מלך העולם שהכל נהיה בדברו. Amen. We have to make a hundred brachos a day, but we caffeinate with kavanah, at least you get the first, that wasn't my first cup of coffee, first bracha of the day. But that first bracha of the day caffeinate with kavanah Shehakol nihya bidvaro. So what if the other 99 my mind is elsewhere? What if I don't even say the other 99 because I forget to make a bracha? But so what? I just flapped my wings for this Shehakol. Who knows what that means or what that will do? Who knows what it means or does for the people I care about, in their merit I make this bracha? Who knows what it does for this world or this universe, who knows what it does for my soul or my progeny? Who knows if it means that my next kid won't knock off a fender in the merit of the Shehakol? By the way, I'm not at all bitter about this. Just to be, just to be clear. Yep, Bailey is correct, the most important thing is she was safe. Baruch Hashem. That is the most important thing. So who knows the butterfly effect of virtue, of the mitzvos that we do, of the inestimable. So that's the answer to the yetzer hara. The yetzer hara says clown, you fool, you oisvarf. Yesterday were you a failure, tomorrow you're going to be a failure. Yesterday you couldn't get it done, tomorrow you're not going to get it done. How many times are you going to set out to achieve that goal and come up so short you barely came out of the starting gate? And you know what our answer is? Matters for this one. Who cares? We talked about that on the podcast. My fact-checker corrected me. I said it was a jellyfish but it was a starfish. You know the story of the young boy walking on the beach? There are thousands, millions of starfish that had washed up on the beach, and he's throwing back in the ocean, and an old man comes up to him and he says, young man, little boy, look around. Look how many starfish are all over this beach. Do you really think it makes a difference what you're doing? You know what he did? Picked up the next starfish, he threw it in and he said, it made a difference to that one. It made a difference to that one. Same thing. You neglected doing mitzvos your whole life, you haven't had kavanah once on one bracha. And you'll never do a mitzvah again, you can't make, you're not going to have kavanah one more. But you had kavanah on this bracha, it made a difference on this one, this dollar that you gave, this kindness that you showed, this generosity that you exhibited, this mitzvah that you did with kavanah. Who knows? That's the answer and the antidote to the yetzer hara. Our power is by living in the present, bless you. She-ein kesher there is no connection between one moment and another. כך השאיפה לעתיד אינו נוגע לעבודה שלעכשיו. What does tomorrow have to do with today? Now tomorrow has an enormous amount to do with today. I'm speaking many times over Shavuos. I can't wait until Shavuos to think about what I'm going to say. I have to be thinking all week. What do I need to get done when? Which day, which shiur, which drasha, which Dvar Torah? When does it all need to get done? How will it all get done? And then you could breathe easy. And how do you schedule all of it? So tomorrow, of course, is very important for today. If you're planning a simcha, if you have something that you need to get done, you can't just wake up that day. Shavuos is a three-day yom tov. That's six meals. That's how many meals? At least six meals. Many more meals. Obviously, I'm not the one preparing the meals. That's a lot of meals. You can't wake up Friday afternoon and say, oh, Shavuos, three-day yom tov. What should we eat? We'll have Cheerios for lunch and Fruity Pebbles for dinner and peanut butter and bread for lunch tomorrow. You can't wake up, it's too late. So tomorrow has an impact only in as much as what does it inform? Today, the present, right now. I have to think about tomorrow, but I'm not thinking about tomorrow because I'm worried about tomorrow. In other words, I can't spend today, Yom Hamyuchas, this Wednesday, I can't think about today what if I don't give a good shiur on Friday night, on Shabbos, on Sunday? What if it doesn't go well? What if I don't say the right thing? What if nobody shows up? What if the source sheets don't? What am I worrying about tomorrow? That'll take away from what my job is today. That'll take away from my opportunity and privilege today. That takes away from the gift of today. I forfeit today if I'm fearful of tomorrow. All I have and the only place I can live, the only dimension I live in is today, is this moment. My power is by being in the present. So I think about the past because I learn from it for the present. And I consider the future because I prepare for it in the present. But the only dimension I live in or care about is the present. And so you got to check yourself. We always often have to keep checking ourselves and evaluating ourselves and looking in the virtual mirror of ourselves and saying, am I in the past in a productive way, or am I in the past because I'm perseverating? Am I thinking about the future in a productive way that's informing my present, or am I lost in my future in a way which is making me anxious and worried and fearful and upset and hurting my present? Have to constantly all day be checking ourselves. Because that's the voice of the yetzer hara. And the voice of the yetzer hara, this is what we learned last time, the reason the voice of the yetzer hara is effective is it says, what do you mean? You're a righteous Jew, of course you have to take stock of the past. Cheshbon hanefesh. You have to to take inventory, Cheshbon hanefesh, that makes you righteous. So Reb Yerucham pointed out, no it doesn't. Cheshbon hanefesh makes you righteous if thinking about the past makes you better in the present. But if thinking about the past only makes you beat yourself up for the past, only makes you filled with regret for the past, only makes you knock yourself down for the past, only makes you feel guilt and shame for the past, then that's the Yetzer Hara. That's not the Yetzer Tov. Yetzer Hatov involves the past only in as much as it informs the present. But if the Yetzer, if the inclination about the past is knocking you down and beating you up and knocking you over and making you feel bad and filling you with regret and shame and guilt, then it's the Yetzer Hara, not the Yetzer Hatov. והיצר מבלבל את האדם שיסתכל על כל עבודה כעניין אחד. The Yetzer Hara says, it just confuses you and it blends everything together, the past, the present, the future. V'zeh lo nachon, it's wrong, כי כל תכלית העבודה היא הדבקות בהשם יתברך. Our mission and our mandate every moment should be filled with clinging to and connecting with Hashem. Hashem, Ribbono shel Olam, what do you want me to be doing in this moment? All that matters is this moment. What am I meant to be doing now? What's next in my life? That's it. What will bring me closer to You? What will help me better connect to Your brand? What will make me more successful in promoting Your name? והוא יתברך אבינו הרחמן. Kadosh Baruch Hu the Almighty is our loving Father. פותח בכל רגע לכל יהודי הזדמנות חדשה להתקרב אליו. Every moment of every day he makes a new opening for us to connect to him. Every moment of every day of our lives is an invitation from Hashem: draw a line in the sand, turn the page, start again. So what last, so what just now was not your shining moment? So what? You looked at the wrong thing, you said the wrong thing, you ate the wrong thing. So what? So what? Learn from it and change it. All we have is right now, this moment. He loves us, he's a loving Father. Poseach be-chol rega, the door is always open. As parents, no matter how disappointed we may be in a child, no matter how much tension or friction there may be there, is the door not always open? Is the line of communication not always open? Is there not an open invitation? It's okay, let's start again, come back. Let's try this from the top. And Hakadosh Baruch Hu as our Avinu Av Harachaman, our loving Father, the same is true. So what we fell? So what we were distant? So what we came up short? So what? Our power is by living in the present, returning to the present. ובאמת כאשר יצליח לך להתגבר, and when we succeed in overcoming, והנה עצר רגע אחד כראוי, and we successfully live one moment the way we're meant to, if we're mindful, כבר יראה איך נפתח לו עוד ועוד. If we can live with mindfulness, if we can live in this present, we will see the way the world opens up for us more and more and more. אבל גם בלא זה כל תנועה טובה היא דבר לעצמו שמשמח השם יתברך ומחבר איתו. Every inclination, every instinct, every positive gesture bid for connection means the world to Hashem. The butterfly effect not only of our action but even of our intent, even of our intent. The butterfly effect of our mindfulness and our intent. Why is he invoking this here, Reb Yerucham? This chapter is called Simcha. We're learning all about happiness and joy. We're learning that happiness is a decision, not an emotion. Happiness is by connecting with the shleimus of Hashem. So why is he talking about this here? Why is he talking about this now? The answer is, this is the formula for happiness. If you want to live be-simcha, be in the present. If you're stuck in the past, how are you happy? The past is filled for everybody because there is no perfect person. There is no perfect person. Ein adam, there's no one on the earth asher lo yechete who doesn't make mistakes. There's no perfect person. So the more we think about the past, the more we're depleted and robbed of our happiness in the present because you will be filled with shame. There are things we're ashamed of, mistakes we've made, things that we could, should be ashamed of. There's regret. Regret is an overwhelmingly painful emotion. If only I'd made a different decision, what would the trajectory be today? What would the outcome, how would it be different? There are people financially who made investments or who bought things who they look back—I'm not talking about Jackie Mason, every Jew has a building in Manhattan they could have owned—I'm talking about there are people who created financial ruin for themselves and they're stuck in regret for the poor decision they made. There are people in a relationship, they made a decision, a moment, a moment of temptation, and they destroyed their life. A moment of anger or rage and they hurt someone around them. There's so much. Regret if we're stuck in the past, and regret is debilitating, it's depleting, it's paralyzing, regret knocks us down. Guilt, not the healthy guilt where we acknowledge wrongdoing so we can learn from it and move on. But the unhealthy Jewish guilt that just drags us down and makes us feel bad and thinks that we're meant to be miserable all the time and feel unworthy. These are horrific. No, who said these are good qualities? These are not virtues. These are not virtues even if they've seeped into our Jewish culture. They're terrible and they're undermining and sabotaging our success. They're all part of the past. Get out, break out cause it's causing us to forfeit our present. And the same is true with future. We're so stuck in being anxious and worried about the future. We're so stuck in being worried about things we can't control and we can't change because they're not here yet. And all this time what we're giving up is our happiness in the present. People who can't sleep and they're grinding their teeth at night and they can't eat and they're living on edge and they have such tension and they're overreacting to people and they have no Simchas HaChayim. There's no joy for life because they're living with regret and shame about the past, or living with fear and anxiety about the future, so there's no joy or happiness in the present. And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because if you have no Simchas HaChayim, who wants to be around you? So you have such regret about the past and fear about the future and you want to get married, but you find yourself still single because you have no Simchas HaChayim. You know what's an incredibly attractive quality? You know what's really attractive? Happiness. Happiness is really attractive. You know what's really unattractive? Guilt, shame, misery, regret, worry, anxiety, fear. I don't know, that repels me away. That's not attractive. It's attractive when you're happy, you have Simchas HaChayim, when you stay calm and carry on, when you let go and let God, every other bumper sticker I could tell you right now, every other cliché. That's what's, that's what's attractive. So we can change the course of our reality by living in the present and choosing. Not being a victim or a martyr of our circumstance, but choosing and making the choice of who we are and how we want to live. That Simcha is the source of success, Simchas HaChayim. The joy for life. Have a Simchas HaChayim. Have a default of happiness, of joy, of a smile. But how could you be happy? Remember I've said you're only as happy as your least happy child. Someone sent me an email, you shouldn't say that, it makes your least happy child feel bad that you're not happy. Maybe true, maybe that's a sensitivity, maybe it's an oversensitivity, I don't know. I think it makes your child feel good that if they're not happy, you're not happy. I don't know if it makes them feel bad, I think it makes them feel good. So I don't feel bad about it. I just decided I don't feel bad about it. But anyway, but anyway, no, the point is that you can be happy. So your child is unhappy or struggling, but show your child we're going to do everything we can, we're going to take all the action that we can, but you know what? We're not going to let it rob us of our happiness. So we're dealing with whatever circumstance, there are people dealing with incredibly challenging, difficult, overwhelming, unfair circumstances. Good. You do everything you can to change it and then the things that you can't change about it, you don't let rob you of your happiness. A Simchas HaChayim, a joy for life. It's the best medicine to overcome whatever crisis one's facing. It gives us the strength and the energy and the fortitude and the resilience that we will need to overcome whatever it is that we're confronting and whatever it is that's coming our way. So Simcha, the reason Rabbeinu Yonah is talking all about this here, the present as opposed to the past and the future, is because the best way to be able to live besimcha is to live in the present. Be besimcha by being in the present. If you're in the past or the future, it's very hard to be besimcha. To be besimcha is to be in the present. All I have is right now. That's all I have is the here and now. All I have is this moment. And this moment I'm making the choice to be happy. And now I have whatever it takes to overcome whatever is going to come my way. Wishing everyone a great Yom Tov. Tonight first we go behind the Bimah with Rabbi Berel Wein, the great Rav, the great author, the great historian. Looking forward to that conversation. Those who are here physically are invited to remain, starting a new Tehillim, a short Tehillim gathering right after the Emuna shiur Wednesday mornings for Esti Moscowitz, אסתר תהילה בת אריה על ציפורה, among all Cholei Yisrael, all those who are ill should have a speedy, a painless, and a full Refuah Shleimah. Until next time, stay happy, stay healthy, stay holy, and stay happy.
