Transcript
Okay good morning, Boker tov and welcome back to Living with Emuna, our weekly support group. It's really my weekly support group. I basically came to the conclusion at the end of the Parsha class yesterday that I'm saving a lot of money on therapy by having people come in a room and letting me just vent every week on whatever's on my mind and going on in my life and I guess that's entertaining for you so thank you for coming back again. I want to thank our generous sponsors of the Emuna shiur, Drs. Avi and Bella Morgen in memory of Rabbi Dr. Brian Galbut, who we continue to miss each and every day, in memory of Bella's mother Dr. Ellen Chanzer, whose yahrtzeit was recently. We're very, very grateful to the Morgens for their generosity. This morning's shiur is also sponsored by the Strolowitz family of Lawrence, New York. You know the Strolowitzes? Lawrence, New York? You gotta get to know them. In dedication for Yisrael ben Baruch, brother of Natasha's Strolowitz. Thank you so much for your generosity and support. All of our learning is for a speedy, painless and complete Refuah Shlema for אסתר תהילה בת אריאל ציפורה and כרמיאל שי בן רייזה. Amen. Okay, I want to start before we get back to Simcha, the topic that we have been studying, just to start for one moment on our Bracha campaign. We continue to have a campaign. This is not our campaign, it's a halacha. We're obligated to say 100 Brachas every day, 100 bid for connections, 100 reminders throughout our day. You know they have these apps that remind you to breathe as if we'd forget. If you forget to breathe you die, so why do you need an app to remind you to breathe? Because we breathe, but we breathe mindlessly. We do it mindlessly. So of course if you stop breathing you stop living, you need to breathe in order to live, but we don't want to just breathe mindlessly, we want to breathe mindfully. We want to be present in our breath. Neshama, neshima, the same root word for breath is the same word for soul. We restore our soul, we elevate our soul, we enrich our soul when we're present in breath. The breath of life is the very way we got life to begin with. ויפח באפיו נשמת חיים. God breathed life into us. So breath is the breath of life and we restore our life, we restore our soul when we take that deep breath, when we take that deep breath. Rabbi Blumenthal wrote a great article, his articles are wonderful every week, but if you didn't get a chance read the article he wrote last week in our weekly, you can find it on our website, his website. He spoke about the people, the society of those who get it. He ran in the Chai Lifeline, he ran in the Miami marathon on behalf of Chai Lifeline. He spent the Shabbos with parents in Chai Lifeline and he talked about those who get it. Chevre Kadisha dinner, it was a beautiful, beautiful article. But he mentions when he was running in the marathon, I was out of breath just reading the article. When he ran the marathon it was a very hot day, a humid day in Florida, not everybody finished, he ran the whole marathon and he talked about towards the end when people were really struggling and suffering. He ran by and there was somebody who was just yelling words of encouragement to strangers: You got this! Don't forget to breathe! He said his watch goes off every few seconds reminding him to breathe, he ignores it. But there was a human being who said don't forget to breathe. He said, ah, takeh, I should remember to breathe. You know that will get me through this, I should stay present, stay present in the breath, in the breathing. Breathing and meditation go together. There's a reason they do. It centers us, it grounds us, it restores us, it rejuvenates us. The breath of life. כל הנשמה תהלל קה כל הנשימה תהלל קה. With every breath we praise You, Hashem. With every breath in our lungs, with every breath of our soul, we are alive, we affirm that we are alive, we are grateful that we are alive, we say thank you that we are alive, we feel a sense of responsibility for what we have to do with the fact that we are alive. The breath of life. I share all of this because I saw a very beautiful insight. There's a wonderful sefer somebody got me, Illuminated Sound: The Baal Shem Tov on Prayer, Rabbi DovBer Pinson. DovBer Pinson I think is a Chabad author, brilliant talmid chacham and he writes a very beautiful book. It's called Illuminated Sound: Baal Shem Tov on Prayer. And he says in here, he talks about, he has a chapter on the posture of prayer. How are you supposed to stand, your right hand over your left hand, chesed over din, over your heart. The notion of shokeling, are we loud, quiet, fast, slow? He goes through different traditions about how to daven. And one of the things he talks about is when we make a Bracha. When you make a Bracha. He says for the purpose of deepening deveikus the Baal Shem Tov advises us to put ourselves fully into the words of davening, into the sound and vibration of each letter. If you want to be mindful, if you want to be able to actually be present with what we're saying, to feel connected not only to what we're saying to whom we are saying it, then connecting to the vibration of each sound, breathing through what we're saying will help keep us present. There are people who when they daven they get out of breath. Why are they out of breath? Because they're in such bad shape? Yes. Because they had too much cholent at the kiddush? Absolutely. But they're also out of breath because when a person is trying to fly through it, trying to discharge it, trying to read it and get it done, flip the page, page, page, page, page, done, kiss it, kiss the siddur, I'm done, finished, now I can go on with my day with me time. I just spoke about a moment ago in the ten minutes of... Is date night over? Can I finally, yeah, check, done, good. Date night's finished, fine. Like, you're not, "Can I hang up now? Goodbye, yes, please." So if you're in love, you say, "I don't want it to finish, I don't want it to end. Can we keep this going? When can we do it again?" So the same is true in our relationship and in our conversation, our ongoing conversation with Hashem. So when you say, "tallis check, tefillin check, davening check, siddur, flip the pages, said my shemoneh esrei, check, check, check, done. Now me time: my coffee, my newspaper, my girlfriends, my phone calls, now I can FaceTime my grandchildren. Now, now's the done with Hashem. Left him in shul, or I left him in the corner of my house where I go daven with him. Now I'm done, thank God, I could go on to the part of the day I enjoy for me." That's not a relationship. That's not a relationship. We talked about that our relationship with Hashem is similar to our relationship in real life, which is, I mentioned when young people who are dating ask me, "How do I know? How do I know if it's going well? Should I continue? Is it the one?" So here's the test I always give them. Here's the test I always give them: what happens when the other person's name comes up on the caller ID? When the other person's name comes up on the caller ID, if your heart skips a beat, you're so excited to answer, you can't wait, what do they have to say, what's going on in their life, you want to share and confide what's going on in yours, that is a very good sign. If when you see their name on the caller ID, your stomach turns in knots and you go, "Oh," I pressed ignore three times in a row, "Can I do it again? How many times in a row can I ignore their call? Can't believe I have to talk, I hate talking, how quickly can I get off the phone?" then that's a bad sign. That's a bad sign for your relationship. That's an excellent metric. So can you can't wait to daven or you can't wait for davening to be over? Is there a romantic electrical relationship with Hashem? Is there time, communication? Are you confiding, or set of obligations: check, check, check, we spoke, we have to speak again, I can't wait for it to be over. So one of the ways to connect to davening is by being present, slowing down. Slow down to the speed of light. Slow down. Slow down. Don't fly through davening, don't fly through mitzvos, don't fly through. Savor the moment, be present. And how do we savor moments? How do we return and calibrate our compass to be present? The answer is through breathing, through breathing. Not only through breathing, sometimes when I daven, when I begin my shemoneh esrei, I try to take a deep breath to be present, but I also try to then be aware of and conscious of my shoulders. Just release, something you don't realize, it's like you're tensed up. Sometimes just like let go, just release all your muscles, let go, take a couple breaths. I'm about to have a conversation, I'm about to be present. So all this is by introduction. I just want to share this with you. They would sit... where is it? For example, before you're about to say the word baruch, pause for a moment, think about what the word and concept of blessing means. Then slowly exhale the first word: baruch, B-A-A-A-A R-U-U-U-U-C-H, allowing the sound to resonate in your body. Baruch. Slow. I'm embarrassed to even really do it, but slow, feel the vibrations, the sound, breathe. It'll still take two seconds to say the whole bracha, but you'll say it quickly. So again, this is our campaign: supposed to say 100 brachos a day, 100 bids for connection, 100 times Hashem should see our name come up on his caller ID, that Hashem, we know you exist, we're checking in, no reason at all, for no reason at all, we're just checking in, we just care, we're just reaching out. 100 brachos a day, which Rav Wolbe said, "Concentrate for ten," to which I say, "Concentrate for one." And that is our campaign. Where is Ilana? Are we close on our cups? We ordered them? We're getting there. Okay, we're getting close, we're getting close. We got the disposable type, we got the tumbler type. We're going to remind everyone the first bracha of the day, the shehakol. But now the baruch of the of the bracha shehakol, not just shehakol, the ambiance and the atmosphere and our health and the weather and everything that goes into that cup of coffee, but the word baruch, breicha, Hashem, all blessing flows from you. I'm aware of, I'm conscious of the blessings in my life. When we think about the people who are struggling, people about the things who have what they have to pray for, we can count our blessings a little bit easier, a little bit more. We can cherish, we can appreciate, we can give a bigger hug to the people in our lives and feel more grateful for what we have and see what's there, not what's missing, and realize how blessed we are and all that's in the word baruch. Just to say baruch, to think about that bracha, to let go of your shoulders, to take that deep breath and to say, "Hashem, there is so much bracha in my life that I am grateful for." And I'm going to put it all in this cup of coffee, on the shehakol nihyeh bidvaro, just everything. I woke up, I have my faculties, I have my house, I can count the members of my of my family, of my household, I can pay my bills today. ברוך שהכל נהיה בדברו. Not what's missing, we'll talk about that too, God, I have some things to talk to you about. But let's start out with what's there, let's start out with what I can be grateful for. Speak up. Yes. What? Okay, I'm not worried about that. Okay. So, my heart skips a beat whenever I'm interrupted in shiur still. Okay. So Rav Itche Meir, Rav Yitzchak Meir Morgenstern, Rav Itche Meir has been telling us that the secret to life is being be-simcha, is being happy, is being joyful. We talked about, what about when you're sad? What about when you're grieving? What about when you're struggling? You have to find the simcha even in the sadness. That even in the grief, even in the sadness, to find the reason to feel be-simcha, which does not mean the external manifestation of smiling and laughing and external joy, but it means feeling whole, feeling complete, realizing that even when we feel incomplete, someone in our life who is struggling, we are struggling. Person is missing a spouse, missing a child, missing financial resources, missing, there's something that's missing in life. The Torah tells us in Parshat Mishpatim that כל יתום ואלמנה לא תענון, you're not allowed to aggravate, mistreat, bully the widow and the orphan. It's repeated all throughout the Torah, and it's the only one that Hashem said, the only one that Hashem says, if you mistreat them, I'm going to exact justice. You bully the underprivileged, I'm coming after you myself, says God, not through an agent, not through an intermediary. And then he says something very harsh and very startling. He says if you're unkind to the widow and orphan, I will turn your wife into a widow and your children into orphans. It's in the Torah, it's in the pesukim, it's not some drash, not some Medrash, it's in the Torah specifically. So the Ibn Ezra says, you'll notice that everything else in Parshat Mishpatim is in the lashon yachid, the singular, this is in the plural. Why? This connects to what I said at the end of the Parsha class yesterday, someone sent me an email reminding me of it. The Ibn Ezra says why? Because it's not just the person who bullies the widow and orphan, it's everyone else who silently watches and says and does nothing. That's who Hashem is going to exact justice to. Silence is not neutrality, silence always benefits the perpetrator, never the victim. You can't be quiet, you have to stand up, you have to interfere, you have to confront, you have to call out, to stop the bully. And when we don't, society is judged by our silence, by our silence, not only by our speaking out. So there's a beautiful Ksav HaKabbalah, Rav Yaakov Zvi Mecklenburg, he says the word almanah comes from al-manah. You know if you go to Israel you order a piece of pizza, how do you say a piece of pizza? A manah, I want a portion, manah. I want a portion of pizza, a portion of whatever you're serving. A manah means a portion, and almanah is somebody, al means missing, lacking, is missing a portion. And he says it's not just talking about the widow. The widow is missing a husband, the widower is missing a wife, but it doesn't just mean that individual. It's anyone who's missing anything in life. I don't think it doesn't mean you're missing a Bentley or you're missing your Tesla or you're missing, but it means missing that which is the fabric of life, missing some of the foundational things of life. A person who's struggling, a person who feels broken, a person who feels lost, a person who's missing, an almanah is al-manah, is missing something. We're not allowed to bully, we have to be very careful, protect, Hashem himself looks down and loves. But even in that state, no matter what we're going through, no matter what we feel, we can be be-simcha when we attach ourselves to Hashem. The source of sadness, of atzvus, is when we feel that we are victims of randomness and chance. The source of sadness is when we feel we're going it alone. Why? Why is this happening? And it's pointless and useless and futile, I'm suffering for no reason. But when a person realizes that we have Avinu she-ba-Shamayim, we have a Father in Heaven, and like a father loves a child even when the child doesn't understand what's happening, but it comes from love from the father. So we put our confidence in Hashem and we say, I wish this were different, I wish I didn't have to endure it, and I'm going to fight anyway I can to stop it, to change it, but Hashem I know it comes from You, it's not random or chance, but it's for a reason. There's meaning and there's purpose, and that's what makes us feel whole, not incomplete, and that's what makes us feel simcha, joy, and not sadness. And we're able to reach out and find Hashem, quotes in here also a famous teaching of the Baal Shem, ובקשתם משם את ה' אלהיך. Pasuk says u-vikashtem misham, you can call out to God from there. Misham means not only when you're in a state of joy and excitement and happiness, not only when you won the lottery literally or figuratively in life, but it means misham, whatever state you're in. However you woke up this morning and rolled out of bed, whatever you're feeling, misham, from that place, u-vikashtem, you can call out, reach out, and you can find Hashem. U-vikashtem misham says the Baal Shem, from wherever we are and from whatever state we're in and from whatever we're feeling. Okay, we're on page kuf nun. Kuf nun. היצר משתדל מאד להפיל את עובדי ה'. היצר הרע משתדל מאוד להפיל את עובדי השם יתברך לעצבות מהדברים האלו. We've been talking about the yetzer hara understands that the most direct way to sabotage our success, to undermine our strategy, yetzer hara understands the best way to get us to fail and to falter is to make us sad, to bring us down, to make us depressed, to help us feel hopeless and helpless. When you're hopeless and helpless when you can't even get out of bed and you can't start your day, when you believe that you don't deserve or you're unworthy or you're incapable or that the universe is against you, then you'll never get anything done. But when you wake up with a set of belief with a confidence, if you wake up and you know that if I'm here it's for a reason, if I woke up this morning Hashem renewed my contract for another day, I yet have something to contribute to this world. I have confidence that as much as I struggle as difficult as it is, there's a reason, there's a purpose, there's meaning. Besimcha. I wake up besimcha. There's a joy for life and a happiness and a satisfaction. I look what's there and not what's missing and I feel, I feel responsible for the talents and skills I have to contribute to make a difference to this world. So the yetzer hatov has to defeat the yetzer hara. Yetzer hara is that little voice inside our head that says you're unworthy, you're incapable, no one cares, you're invisible, you failed so many times, you're just going to fail again. Yetzer hara is the voice that says this relationship or this job effort or that dream you have, it's hopeless and it's helpless, give it up and move on, it's not happening. And the yetzer hatov comes along and says you got this. Get up, smile, put a skip in your step, put a smile on your face, have a positive bias and a positive energy and have a positive belief, think good and it will be good. We create the reality in our lives by the energy that we put out around us. And we all see this empirically each and every day. The people who have a negative affect, the people who have negative energy, the people who have a negative force field around them, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, they create negativity in their lives. Others withdraw from them because who wants to be connected to someone so negative? And the people who have a positivity bias, the people who everything's amazing and will be amazing and will work out and we've got this, and we dream and ambition and aspiration and drive and hope, and you can knock me down a million times and I'm going to get up that million and one first. That person, that positive energy creates a positive reality around ourselves, around ourselves. ואל יפלא עוד מן האריכות והפרטיות תראה ותבין אדוני כמה יקר וחשובים הדברים האלו כי העצבות היא הפתח והשורש לכל הנפילות. Sadness is the opening, sadness is the stumble that leads to every fall. ועיקר העצבות אצל עובדי השם יתברך היא בדברים האלו הנוגעים לעבודתם. And the biggest thing that brings us down and makes us feel hopeless and helpless is when spiritually we are unfulfilled, when spiritually we are underperforming. You know we can overperform in life and underperform in life. We can overachieve and underachieve. And I got to tell you the Jewish people and the Torah community we are great overachievers in so many other areas of life. We want our kids to be the star of their Little League team, we want our children to strive for Ivy League or bust, we want them to make a billion dollars and have everything in gashmius in the world, physically, materially. We preach in our homes and we condition our families and we raise our children and demand of ourselves, we overachieve in every area. We want to be the best looking and the most charismatic and the best speaker and the most popular and have the most things and make the most difference, and we overachieve, overachieve, overachieve, and then it comes to our neshama, it comes to our soul, and it's good enough. I said enough davening, it's good enough. I did enough chesed, I gave enough tzedakah. I worked enough on my personality. It's good enough, it's good enough. We underachieve, we sell ourselves short. Why don't we have the same bar? Why don't we raise it so high like we do in all these other areas of our life? Why don't I want to look as good spiritually as we look physically? Why don't we pamper ourselves spiritually as much as we do physically? Why aren't we concerned with keeping up as much spiritually as we do physically? Why don't we strive for excellence and overachieving spiritually as much as we do physically? Because underachieving and underperforming and coming up short and feeling dissatisfied and malnourished and dehydrated spiritually is what leads to that sadness. It leads to that sadness. You know if you haven't eaten in a long time you know there's a phenomenon called being hangry. You know people like that. Those of us with plenty of reserves we do okay, but if you've got no backup then when you get hangry, when you haven't eaten, you get hangry: irritable, on edge, lashing out, impatient. You get hangry if you haven't had anything to eat. Sometimes you have a big headache, you're dizzy, you're out of energy, you realize your mouth is dry, I haven't had a drink all I don't mean alcoholic drink, I mean I haven't had a drink all day, I'm dehydrated, I got to drink something. So how much we nourish ourselves physically has an enormous impact on how we behave and who we are. But the same is true spiritually. We can't measure it necessarily the same way, but how many of us are walking around spiritually dehydrated, spiritually malnourished, bare bones. Again there are those who spiritually have some backup. They have a good fat on their spiritual skeleton. So if there's a day that goes by that they didn't spiritually eat, there's a lot what to rely upon. But those who are bare bones, a skeleton spiritually, that have no backup and no reserves, if you skip a day of spiritual nourishment, malnourished, dehydrated, whatever the equivalent of spiritually hangry is. And that brings to sadness, that's what he's prescribing. What Rav Itche Meir is diagnosing is that when we're spiritually malnourished, then we become helpless and hopeless. If we're not working on our emuna, we're not talking to Hashem regularly, if we don't get excited and our heart doesn't skip a beat when his name comes up on the caller ID saying it's time to daven, it's time to make a bracha, it's time to learn Torah. If we're spiritually malnourished, if we're not making the time and we're not communicating and we're not confiding and we're not thanking or protesting and asking, if we're not, if we're not spending time on our neshama, so then we're gonna feel low. And we're gonna feel we're on our own. And we're gonna feel we've been abandoned. And we're gonna feel we don't understand this world. And we're gonna feel it's cruel, and we're gonna feel it's hopeless and it's helpless. And we're gonna be sad. And that sadness is gonna undermine everything. You need an attitude of positivity, an attitude of gratitude to start the day, and in the middle of the day, and to end the day. And the sky's the limit on what we can accomplish and how rich our relationships can be, and the strength we can have to endure whatever comes our way. But if we're a skeleton, if we're spiritually malnourished, if we've never worked on our emuna, our bitachon, our dveykus, if we barely know he's there let alone talk to him, invest in him, spend time with him, connect with him, have a relationship with him, then when push comes to shove in those moments of challenge and struggle, we're gonna feel we don't have what it takes. We'll be hopeless and helpless, and that sadness, that sadness just compounds itself. The sadness leads to bad choices, that sadness leads to weakness, that sadness leads to hopelessness, and we have no shot. Left-hand column. לפעמים אדם יודע שהוא נכשל באיזה דבר לפי מדרגתו. At times a person knows I've stumbled, I've fallen when it comes to a certain thing, all according to our level. Everyone's judged according to their level, we're not all on the same level. So given our background, who we're from, where we're from, where we started, what opportunities we had determines what could be expected of us. כגון ששינה איזה מדה ודיבור מה שלא היה צריך לומר וכדומה כל שכן אם נפל באיזה עבירה ממש רחמנא ליצלן. There are people who are great and could be great, and therefore they're measured against greatness, and anything less than great is a failure. And there are other people who've not yet been great, who don't have the same opportunity or exposure to greatness and therefore are measured by different standards. היצר הרע משתמש בזה. This is exactly the methodology of the yetzer hara, the methodology of the voice of self-sabotage. And this is not just again religiously the yetzer hara, yetzer tov, the little angel, the little devil, the little figurines on our shoulders whispering in our ears. That's a very immature, unsophisticated description of this. We're talking about the basic human psyche, human psychology. We're talking about how every one of us is made up, and you could read countless books and research by therapists, by researchers, by psychologists, by motivational experts and speakers and consultants, and they all talk about this same phenomenon, that היצר הרע כדי לייאש אותו מעבודה. Why do people underachieve? Tony Robbins has built a gazillion dollar career out of doing this. And there are millions of people who listen to him, and he's taking all of our Torah. It's all rooted in the Torah. הפוך בה והפוך בה דכולא בה. Everyone's paying all this money to go to his seminars, and he's really good at what he does, and he's packaging these same ideas and values that we have, that Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov taught us and that go back to Adam Harishon and his conversation with Hashem in the garden of Eden. That it's all about not having ye'ush. אין שום יאוש בעולם. There cannot be despair. There cannot be hopelessness. We can never, ever give up, ever. Because despair and hopelessness is the kryptonite. It's over. It keeps us in bed. It keeps us not believing. It keeps us underachieving, and it keeps us creating these self-fulfilling prophecies of broken relationships and of failed dreams and failed efforts. והוא אומר לו כבר נפלת וכבר אינך צדיק. Yetzer says come on, you know how much time you wasted watching that narishkeit? You looked at the wrong images, you repeated the wrong lashon hara, you skipped all that davening, you continue to raise your voice against your children, so eincha tzaddik. You're not that righteous person. וכבר אין טעם ל Who are you fooling going to the emunah shiur? Who are you fooling signing up for the Tehillim WhatsApp group? Who are you kidding that you claim you're going to take on this new thing or you're going to dress that way, you're going to be that person? Who are you fooling? Yetzer says, God knows who you really are, you know who you really are and you know how many times you've fallen. So who are you kidding? והוא רוצה להחלישך עכשיו and you know what that does, it weakens us. It's not only true spiritually, religiously, it's true physically. Who are you kidding you're going to live that healthy lifestyle? Everybody knows what you ate 11 o'clock last night, what you snuck when you thought nobody was watching. Everybody knows how the portion you ate, how frequency you ate or what you ate. You skipped that workout or you lied to yourself about the workout or the settings on the machine of that workout. We all know, who are you fooling? Who are you kidding? Who are you kidding? Because you don't tell your Peloton name to anyone else, so therefore you think you had a phenomenal workout. Everybody knows, you rounded up on your on your plank so you could pretend you planked for longer than - who are you fooling? Yetzer kicks in and says you didn't do it this many days in a row or you didn't do what you could have done, you didn't push yourself as hard as you could. So why bother? Why bother? Why bother claiming you eat healthy, you're a joke. Why bother saying you exercise, you're a clown. Why bother saying you're a great patient parent, you lose your cool, you raise your voice. Why bother? Why bother? It's the work of the Yetzer Hara. He's trying to rob your happiness, your joy, your sense of success, your vision, your dream, your ambition. והנה כאן יש בעיה. We have a problem, כי מצד אחד חשבון הנפש הוא באמת דבר יסודי בעבודה. On the one hand, it's fundamental. It's fundamental to serving God, it's fundamental to success in life to always be measuring, evaluating, to have a self-awareness of where we're holding. ובודאי שאדם צריך לבדוק את עצמו ולהצטער על מכשלותיו. A person needs to have self-awareness. We have to measure ourselves. Peter Drucker, the great management expert, he said what gets measured gets managed. It's one of the great management quotes. What gets measured gets managed. It's true in non-profit world, it's true in the for-profit world, it's true on our diets and our exercise regimens, it's true in every area of life. What gets measured gets managed. If you don't measure it, then you fool yourself, you fool others, but you can't fool the reality and the data. What gets measured gets managed. So on the one hand, you need a cheshbon hanefesh. On the one hand we need a self-awareness, on the one hand we have to take inventory, on the one hand we have to check ourselves, ובלי זה אזי מלבד מה שלא יתוקן מה שפגם גם לא יהיה לו מחייב להתקדם. So first you can't ever know where you're holding, but you also can't make progress. You have nothing to measure against. So you know what? You became determined. You read Rabbi Blumenthal's great article. You said next Miami marathon I'm competing. I'm going to start running. But you don't use any of the amazing apps that are out there to actually track how long a mile took you or how many miles you ran. How do you know how well you did? How do you know what are the conditions that you do well or need to do differently? How do you know if you've made progress? How do you know if you don't ever measure? You don't know the distance you ran, you don't know the time it took, you don't know what your heartbeat was. You don't know anything. So what, ignorance is bliss? Ignorance will make you despondent and depressed. So on the one hand, you have to measure to manage. We have to have inventory of our lives. We have to track how many days in a row since I complained. How many days in a row since I lost my cool? I was part of a group of guys that were working out, WhatsApp group, keeping track how many days in a row they could go without getting angry. It's a hard streak to have. Hard streak to have. How many days in a row you can go without getting angry. There was a pastor who made a career, I think he ended up leaving his church and writing a book and selling the bracelets, but he once gave a sermon which he turned into a career about trying to track how many days in a row you can go without complaining. And he made a bracelet to track it and you had to switch it to the other hand every time you complained to start the count again. And I forget what the statistic was, but the average person to get to 30 days in a row without complaining took like three-quarters of a year. It didn't take 30 days. It took many more because how hard is it for us? So how do you know if, you know, you bluff yourself, but if you measure it, you'll manage it. So on the one hand, if you want to have a mechayev, if you want to obligate yourself, if you want to have a driver to improve, you have to know where you were and where you came from. אמנם מצד שני זה עלול להביאו לעצבות. But it's very dangerous. It's a double-edged sword. Because you know what you do? You say, Rabbi Blumenthal's running like a four-minute mile, the guy's like a Kenyan track star, and me, I'm still at like a 12-minute walk around the circle, huffing and puffing. I need a defibrillator to accompany me as a backpack. So you start to manage how you're doing, you track yourself against yourself or against others and you say, hopeless and helpless. What's the point? Why bother? So we have this problem, says Rav Itche Meir. Double-edged sword, on the one hand you have to know, you have to do heshbon ha-nefesh. You have to take inventory. On the other, the more inventory you take, the more depressed you could be, the more sad you could become. בדרך היא להפריד בין העבר להווה. So the answer is to separate between the past and the present. היינו שיקבע זמן להתבונן במה שהיה, אם צריך תיקון ואיך לתקן, אבל עכשיו ימשיך הלאה, ולא יחשוב על מה שהיה אלא רק על עכשיו. The answer is you have to set aside and designate time to think about what was, to learn from what was. But don't ever allow what was to seep into what is. You have to separate the past from the present. When we're in the present, that's all there is is the present. When we're in the present, that's the only dimension that matters. The present, how does that poem go? The present is a gift from above, future is... none of you are poets. Appreciate amateur poetry. Future is a mystery... Future is a mystery, the past is history, the present is a gift, that's why they call it the present. Thank you, Penny. Thank you, Penny. A penny for your thoughts, Penny. Wow. Wow. A penny for your poem. A penny for your poem. So the present. So you have to separate, says Reb Itcha Meyer, to be able to learn from the past, but not live or get stuck or become debilitated by the past, we have to learn to separate the past from the present. So the past deserves its time. Gotta think about, evaluate, investigate, consider, learn from, and then leave it in the past. The past only has value in how it informs the present. But if you get stuck in the past, if you beat yourself up because of the past, if you're paralyzed and debilitated because of the past, if you're overly nostalgic for the past, you know, Rabbi Blumenthal told me that at one point in the race, he was running alongside like a 90-year-old. I think he passed him, but at one point, you know, there are octogenarians who run marathons. So the octogenarian running the marathon, if they're measuring themselves against their time from when they were 19 years old, if they have nostalgia for the past, they're never going to run in the marathon of the present, because you can't do at 80 what you did at 19. You can't. So the past has a role, but one should neither get stuck there because they are sad about the past, nor get stuck there because you're nostalgic for the past. And the tragedy in both cases is that you are conceding and forfeiting the present because of the past. The past has a role in informing the present. Learn from it. Grow from it. Gain from it. Consider it. And then get out of it and get into the present. That's the only dimension we're in. All that matters is right now. What decision do I need to make? Who am I with? What activity am I doing? How am I feeling? What is my attitude? What is my disposition? Where am I in my present? Just to add something. Louder. I find that a very helpful tactic or even something very therapeutic is thinking about how whatever happened in the past is in the past, now at hadlakas neiros is a new week, everything that happened in the past, now I can start new. Or at, you know, every morning you wake up, you say modeh ani. Even if I did bad things yesterday or wasn't the best day, now I'm waking up, it's a new day and I can start again. And whenever you have, Rosh Hashanah is the greatest example of that. So every time that you have that opportunity to start something new, you can just focus on, you know, whatever I did in the past is gebei, it's over, now I have a new beginning. And that's very helpful. That is a fantastic suggestion. In other words, use the gifts that Judaism gives us and that the world gives us to be natural bookmarks that allow us to turn to a new chapter. As Jews we're given that gift of every day is a new day, every week becomes a new week, every month has a Rosh Chodesh is a new month, every year is a new year. It's like Hashem says, I get it. We're fallible, you're human, I designed, I created you this way. So I'm going to build into your cycle constant opportunities to draw a line in the sand and start again. I'm going to constantly build in the opportunity to begin anew, to take fresh, to not get stuck, to not be held back by what was, but to determine right now what will be. You know, you can't change the past. As badly as you want to build a time machine, you can't change the past. You cannot change the past. So to get stuck in the past will only cost you the present and your future. So learn from the past, gain from the past, but don't get stuck in the past because then you're giving up the present and the future. Mistakes of the past, or success of the past, or history what was in the past, it's gone. It's gone. Guilt of the past, shame of the past, there's so many emotions that are in the past. Regret, regret's a huge one. There's a Wall Street Journal article about regret, I think last week. No regrets is no way to live life, which the Wall Street Journal basically was saying, Ephraim Goldberg put this aside for Elul and Yamim Noraim. So. But but we can't go to the past. All we have is the present. So how do we live our present? Do we give it up? Do we lose it? Do we forfeit it? Or are we fully invested in it? If option A was taken from us in the past, do we move to option B for the present? Not always the option that we want can we still have. But do we successfully transition? I told you last week several times about Rabbi Machlis and his Simchas HaChaim despite having lost the greatest part of his past, Rebbetzin Machlis. But you're going to lose the present because you don't have who you had in the past? Does that make sense? We mistakenly think that these things will end with this. We mistakenly we're already over time. We mistakenly think that these things are emotions. You know you could sit here or you could listen and you can say to yourself, and I'm guilty or struggle with this too of saying, these are all words, these are all nice ideas. But do you know how I feel? I feel sad or I feel happy or I feel I'm thinking about the past. Can't control, I'm driving, I'm in the shower, I'm falling asleep. So at 3 AM I have to wake my spouse and tell them what I'm worried about from the past. The guilt or the shame or the regret or the mistake or the future, the anxiety, the worry, what will be. And the spouse in the present just wants to be fast asleep in the present. So you'll say these are emotions, I can't control them, and that's what I want to leave you with. If there's no other message it's this: these are decisions, they're not emotions. Happiness is a decision, it is not an emotion. We control our mind. Now again, there are emotions, there are feelings, there are things we have to work through with therapists and experts and sometimes medications. I'm not talking about clinically diagnosed challenges that people have. Those are real, they are important, there's no stigma and no shame in addressing them. I cannot emphasize that strongly enough. I'm not talking about that. But the everyday going through life emotional roller coaster, we make decisions. When we conclude this second, will you turn to the person next to you, or when you walk out with someone, or the first person you encounter after this class, will you have a smile? Will you make the decision to be happy? Will you be determined to be joyful? Will you have a positivity bias no matter what you will face in your day? Or did you get out of bed and you're letting your emotions control you? You've made the decision to be negative, farbissener, complain, miserable, angry, unhappy. It's a decision not an emotion. Stop blaming everyone around you, take responsibility. Stop conceding control to the people in your life who you think or the conditions or circumstances that you think automatically make you who you are or react the way you're reacting. You're in control, you're in charge. It's your life, it's your body, it's your attitude, it's your demeanor. It's what energy that we put out to the universe. So what energy do you want to put out? How do you want to be known? How do you want to be thought of? Or put differently, what is your brand? What is your brand? Brands have value. When you see a Nike swoosh or you see another logo, a brand triggers something. So what's your brand? When someone says your name, do people think positivity, high energy, joy, drive? Or oh the negative, complaining, miserable, jealous, envious, ridden with guilt, stuck in the past. What's your brand? What do you want your brand to be? How do you want to be thought of? And then go and become that person. You want to tune in tonight to Behind the Bima, the farmer who spoke here, Alana Toeg who was incredible is our guest tonight on Behind the Bima to share her story even more broadly. That's at 9 PM. Until next time—we are off next—no, we're on next Wednesday. I'm back. We're on next Wednesday. We're off for Parsha class, but we're on next Wednesday. Until next time, stay happy, stay healthy, and stay holy.
