Transcript
Good morning Boker Tov ladies, welcome back to Living with Emuna, hope everybody is successfully caffeinating with Kavana. ברוך אתה ה' אלהינו מלך העולם שהכל נהיה בדברו. Amen. We have our disposable-free caffeinate with Kavana cups, or you can buy them after the Shiur. I want to thank our generous sponsors, the Emuna series sponsors for the year, Dr. Zavi and Bella Morgan, in memory of Rabbi Dr. Brian Galbut, in memory of Bella's mother, Dr. Ellen Schandler. This morning's Shiur is also sponsored by the Schandler family in commemoration of the first Yahrtzeit of Sarah's mother, a very special woman, Carol Parson, Tzipora bas Yitzchak, whose Neshama should have an Aliya. Amen. Thank you for that sponsorship. Thank you, Sarah, for all that you do, a tremendous tribute to your mom's Neshama. Also thank you to Lynn Friedman, who contributed to the sponsorship of our Emuna cups in memory of רב מרדכי ישראל צבי בן משה אהרן, Rav Mordechai Rindenow. Thank you for that generosity and helping make them available to all. We are learning all about Simcha. We are still in the second month of Adar. Yes, double the trouble, double the fun, double the Simcha, but soon it will be Nissan, the month of Geula. We are rapidly heading towards Geula, but we're still in the period of Simcha, and the truth is that Simcha applies all year round. Simcha is not reserved only for the two months of Adar or the ordinary one month of Adar, but Simcha is all year round. You have to feel Simcha. You have to have joy. Last week I wrote the article, based a lot on our class here, about smiling, that happiness, as we say every week, is not an emotion. Happiness is a decision. It is a determination. You get out of bed in the morning and you are determined and you make the decision to be happy. Don't wait to feel happy to smile, start smiling, and the micromuscles you engage in your face will release endorphins and adrenaline, which will bring you a sense of happiness. I hope that you have all been, in fact, doing that. I hope that you have been smiling and changing the environment in your homes, in your carpool, and at work, in the gym, and every—nobody smiles in the gym. But everywhere else, every—you only smile when you're leaving the gym, when you're done at the gym is when you smile. Let's see if we can raise the temperature, okay. Let me raise... So smiling, don't wait to be happy to smile, start smiling and you will—and you will feel happy. And I hope that people will... this week's article I'm sharing from the extraordinary Levaya that we had on Sunday. Our community lost a young man who was diagnosed with Duchenne's muscular dystrophy at three years old, suffered for 21 years—didn't suffer, lived for 21 years with it, and passed away last week. And we had a very, very sad, tragic, very heartfelt funeral, Kavod acharon, a beautiful Levaya on Sunday afternoon. And it was extraordinary how Corey's father, Ed, and his two sisters, Alana and Naomi, all in their eulogies, all thanked Hashem for the gift of having had Corey during those years, and did not express any protest or anger or resentment or bitterness or questions of why or where was God, but used the opportunity to thank Hashem. And it was genuine. There was nothing that was disingenuous about that. But they did something else also, and they talked about—and again I'm going to quote their actual speeches in the article this week—but Ed, Corey's father, said that in fact the day that Corey's Neshama left this world late Thursday night was not even as difficult as 21 years earlier, the day that they got the diagnosis. That their lives would forever be different, that he would never end up having to play catch or being able to do the things a lot of fathers and sons get to do with Corey, and that ultimately they never walked him down the aisle and he did not live a long life. So the day they got that diagnosis and that determination was an even harder day. And that night they had an Upsherin of a close friend, that night they had a Simcha to attend, and he described that he and Randy decided, "We're going to that Simcha. That we're going to not let this diagnosis take away our happiness in life." And they were determined to go to the Simcha as a symbol of the way they would live their lives for the next whatever years that they had their son Corey despite the challenging situation that he would live with. And that's exactly what they did, they lived with that sense of Simcha. They went to a Simcha that evening and they lived with the Simcha. And then their daughter spoke about she was—they were at a muscular dystrophy conference together as a family, and the speaker who convened the conference had lost two sons to muscular dystrophy, and in the speech mentioned that her two sons had died from muscular dystrophy. And Naomi I think she said she was six at the time. Eight? Eight. She was eight years old at the time. She knew her brother was different and had this disability and diagnosis, but she had no idea what it meant. And when she heard the speaker say that, she burst into tears. And she turned to her mother and she said, "You mean Corey's going to die?" And then she ran out of the room crying and her mother followed her, and she recalled all these years later exactly what her mother said to her. She said, "Cry, let out this cry, and then put yourself together, we're going to go right back into that room and we're going to choose to be happy, because we're going to make Corey's life as happy as possible. We're going to live every moment and every day to its fullest and we're going to surround him with positive energy and with happiness, and we cannot control or change what this diagnosis, but we can control and change how we live each day and how we live our lives." That was her determination, her decision, and it became their family's determination and decision, it's who they were and how they lived, literally until his very last moment. And we are all thrown things, hopefully not as challenging, that you can't change or you can't control. There are circumstances you cannot change and you cannot control. We can control how we react. We can control how we feel. We can choose. It was a perfect example, powerful example, that's why I want to write it up, because an extraordinarily powerful, powerful example. It was particularly poignant because I drove from the cemetery to a wedding of two young people from the shul. And it's a very difficult transition, it was a real rabbinic day, it wasn't only me, there were several people from the shul who went both to the funeral and immediately or directly to the to the wedding. And changing gears, compartmentalizing, going to a simcha and being present, it's tough, it's not easy. But I drew strength from the Reichenbergs, who went from that diagnosis of their three-year-old. If there's any simcha that you can get an excuse to not go to, no offense to anyone who just made an upsherin, but if you can get out of anything, it should be an upsherin. Upsherins are important, they're beautiful, for those who have that minhag, more power to you. But if there's anything that you could say, "So sorry, couldn't make it," on a day that you got a terrible diagnosis of your child, your only son, pretty sure they could have gotten out of it. But not only did they not get out of the simcha, they went that night. And I had a suspicion that I knew whose upsherin it was, because I remember only one person 21 years ago made an out of control, over the top, insane party upsherin. He was very excited to have his boy. And at the funeral in the parking lot, the father who made the upsherin gave Ed the biggest hug. Who put the tissues here today? Who knew? That father gave him the biggest hug and said, "I had no idea what happened in your life that day. I can't believe you came." That means that not only did they attend the upsherin, they didn't wear it on their sleeve. Nobody knew. They made the decision to be smile and to be happy. I'm sure they cried, I'm sure they were focused on what it meant and what it would mean, but for those moments at the upsherin they put a smile on their face. So that father gave him a big hug 21 years later. Now all of you are making me cry. I can't look at any of you. Okay, let's go into our text. But anyway, the point is, the point is that there are role models in our lives, there are extraordinary people. We talk about it. Wednesdays we give a little pep talk. We have a little pep rally. Smile, don't worry, be happy. Smile, the whole world smiles with you. We make cups, we make notebooks, we make magnets. We do whatever we can to smile. Whatever we need, that's how hard it is. But then you encounter, nobody told the Reichenbergs, "Listen, I'm in the middle of a series on simcha, see if you could weave into your eulogy something about choosing to be happy." Nobody set them up for this. This is who they are. This is who they are, who they've been, and who they will be, and they made that choice. And we... We have the ability to latch on. You could jump on. You could ride the coattails. So next time you feel like frowning, or being sad, or miserable, or resentful, or negative, or hypercritical, or complaining, because the internet's out in your house, or because I don't know what, so just think about this funeral, think about these people, and so many others like them. Every Holocaust survivor who ever smiled again in their whole life after everything they lost and went through and chose, it's a decision. It's a decision. So many people they just relinquish the control. They think that we can't, it's not in charge, it's not ours, but it's our decision. It's our decision to be happy. It's our decision, it's not an emotion. Of course there's an emotional component to it, but it's not purely an emotion, it is a decision and we can make that decision to be happy. It's in our power to make that decision to be happy. Okay. We are on Kuf Nun Vav, I think, right? 156. לפעמים היצר הרע מכניס לאדם מחשבה של עצבות על מה שהיה בעבר ומעורר לו תחושת הפסד. Sometimes the Yetzer Hara sneaks into a person and fills our mind with thoughts of sadness of what was. ובאמת מתוך הדברים שגורמים להפסד השמחה הדבר שעושה את זה באופן חזק מאוד היא תחושת ההפסד וההחמצה ברוחניות או בגשמיות. What is the source of so much sadness in people? When we think about something that's missing or that isn't or that wasn't. We think about something that's lacking, whether it's physical or whether it's spiritual. Physical or spiritual. והיא תחושה משתקת ממש והיא תופסת חזק את האדם וגורמת לעצבות וחלישות הדעת. So people get sad and people are brought down by a memory, a negative memory, or by a negative realization or recognition. When we think about a previous or past failure, we think about a previous or past failed dream or expectation. We think about a previous or past sadness. It grips us, it overwhelms us, and it makes us become hopeless and helpless, despair and despondent. ולפעמים היא גורמת לייאוש. And at times it makes us give up. Vechoseir koach lehamshich. And we don't want to continue. We don't want to strive and we don't want to try and we don't want to push. It makes us give up, says Rav Itamar. ובפרט כאשר אדם מרגיש שהוא גרם לעצמו את ההפסד. When a person thinks, it's my fault, I'm a failure. I blew that relationship, I blew that deal, I blew those years of my life that I wasn't religiously as motivated or inspired as I could have or should have been. So I am a failure. Not that I had a failure, but I am a failure. ונראה לו שאילו רק היה עושה כך וכך היה מצליח. If only I had done, if only I had said, and only if I had been, if only I had been motivated, then I could have been what I could have been. There's an incredible quality, there's an amazing feeling that people have, which is so dangerous and damaging, and that is regret. Regret can be inspiring and motivating and powerful and positive if regret pushes you to make up for lost time. If regret motivates and inspires you to transform yourself to be a better version of yourself now. But if all regret makes you do is marinate and stew and become paralyzed in the past, if regret just makes you wish you had a time machine when you don't, and therefore fills you with sadness, sadness. It's one of the saddest things in the world is to see someone with regret. To wake up late in life and have such regret. But it's never too late and it's never over. There's always a chance. And you'll say, well, there are regrets of people who are no longer here and those relationships can't be mended in the physical world, but they can spiritually. There are conversations that carry on even with the neshamos who are no longer here. At every funeral I do, I give a little pep talk to the family right before the burial and I say, I learned this from one of my teachers that we don't bury people, we bury bodies. Bodies fail and give out and we bury bodies, but we don't bury people. Their neshama is immortal and is eternal and is around us always. And whenever we want to continue that conversation, we can. We can. We ordinarily can't hear. If you actually hear them speaking back, sometimes you can. If you actually hear them speaking back, make an appointment with someone. But I mean, there's a premonition, there's a feeling, there's something that happens, you see their picture, you hear their song come on the radio, you see a sign, you can feel their presence, you can feel that ongoing conversation. So even the regret of a conversation you did not have can be made up for, because we don't say goodbye to people, we don't bury people, we say goodbye and we bury their bodies. Not who they are, they are still here and will be forever, as we will be to the people around us one day. So regret, if regret motivates and pushes you, if you regret eating the mishloach manos last night. There's some themes that seem to repeat themselves here in the Emunah Shiur. I'm happy to tell you my Cape Cod potato chips are still sealed, the one with the sign that said don't don't open, still sealed. But I'm not a chocolate guy, but I found last night in the cabinet an entire bag of the chocolates from mishloach manos, it's like so like a little Twix and a little and a little Snickers and a little Reese's, dark chocolate Reese's, wow. Anyway, I'm still not a chocolate guy, but you speak about regret, trust me when I woke up this morning the very first feeling and thought I had was regret, I promise you. So there are insignificant regrets like that, but there are big regrets. אז האדם מרגיש מאוד רע מזה ובפרט דברים רוחניים אם באמת שגא ועשה טעות. Spiritually you made a mistake. Spiritually you've veered down the wrong path. Spiritually you engaged in behaviors or practices or conduct. Spiritually you neglected who you could have and should have been, vehifsid mah shehifsid, and you've lost out on what you've lost out on, and it's gone. It's gone. And the Yetzer Hara, this is the voice of the Yetzer Hara, that has you live in the past. The voice of the Yetzer Hara is trying to get us stuck in the past. The voice of the Yetzer Hara is trying to have us live only in that dimension of the past. It's got us. You know why? What happens when you get stuck and you live in the past? What happens when you're consumed with regret? What are you forfeiting and where are you not living? The present. And the only place that you can live is the present. The past is the past, that's why it's history. And the future is not yet here. All we have is the present, that's why it's called a gift from Hashem. All we have is the present, that's all we have. It's the only dimension you can live in. So the past can inform the present and we can live in the present to prepare for the future, but the only dimension, you cannot go back in time to the past and you cannot fast-forward even sometimes as much as we want to the future. The only dimension that we get to live in is the present. Do not forfeit or concede the present because you're stuck in the past or because you're living in anticipating for the future. You see this in different generations. Young people are so living in their future they're not in the present. In college and like I'm going and get married, I'm going to be, I'm going to work, I'm going to hey, just right now how about cleaning up your room? Let's just in the present why don't you help me get ready for Pesach in the present? And you have older people who they sit and they're forfeiting and neglecting their present because they're just living in the past. They want to tell you stories you've heard the story four billion times, but they just want to tell you the same story and they just want to show you the same pictures and they just want to go in the same time machine back to the past. And you say that's all amazing and it's beautiful and I don't care if you're wheelchair-bound, I don't care what medications you're on, I don't care what limitations you have, you still have a present. You have a present. What do you want to do with your present? What phone calls do you want to make? What books do you want to read? What classes do you want to attend? What model do you want to be for your children and grandchildren? What legacy do you want to leave? Who do you want to be in your present? The only dimension we live in is the present. Can't go back to the past and we're not yet up to the future. And regret, regret tries to get us stuck in the past and convince us we have no future. And in the process, we give up our present. And that's the only place that we have. This is the notebook, where's Alana? Where's our notebook? Our notebook, turn the page. Turn the page, you have a new present. Turn the page, because this page which is miserable, this page which you spilled coffee on, this page which is illegible, this page which writes down some mistakes and bad news, you could turn the page. It doesn't mean that some things on yesterday's page are not going to come with you to today's page, but turn the page. Daf chadash. Go to the footnote resh nun hey. גם בדברים גשמיים היצר נעשה בלבב האדם לחשוב אלו הייתי עושה כך וכך. To forget the future, the present. So too in the physical world, material world. Jackie Mason, alav hashalom. Jackie Mason has an entire routine. Every Jew has a building in Manhattan they could have owned. He has a whole routine. You drive by. I was going to buy that building. I should have owned, I could have owned that building. Everybody has, he has a whole routine about it. That's that whole Jewish mentality. You know how many lots I could have owned? 1999 when I moved here, $90,000 a lot. 1999. So in the spiritual world, we get stuck. And in the physical world, you know how many buildings I could have owned? You know that bad investment I never should have made or the investment I should have gone into? In the material world, we have regrets. When you see pictures of yourself in the '70s and what you were wearing. A lot of regrets. וצריך לדחותם על ידי מחשבות האמונה, but one has to dispel and push away these thoughts. How? What is the tool? What is the instrument? How do we push away those thoughts of regret? לזכור שהכל בגזירת עליון ומעשה אדם והשתדלותם אינם כלום. To remember that everything is from above, everything is from Hashem, and things were orchestrated the way they were meant to be. This doesn't mean we don't have accountability. It doesn't mean there aren't consequences. It doesn't mean that we do not express our own personal choice and personal will. We did. However, even within that, it was all orchestrated from above. You cannot turn back the clock. All you can say is, this is the way it was meant to be. And it all contributes to who I am now. So if I allow it to contribute to who I am now by learning from it and growing from it and either wanting to repeat it or wanting to never repeat it, then I give it meaning retroactively. But if it just holds me back and holds me down and fills me and overwhelms me with regret and therefore I lose my present, then it's continuing to be a negative influence on me. כמו שכתב החובות הלבבות הבחיי אבן פקודה המסילת ישרים הרמח"ל שאין השתדלות מועילה אלא שגזירת עליון שאדם מחויב לעשותם כי בשביל שיהיה בחירה השם יתברך רוצה שהעולם יתנהג כאילו יש טבע. Hakadosh Baruch Hu orchestrates, created a world as if we have free will, but in the end of the day, He is directing us towards the free will that we express. How He made us, who He made us, when He made us, what world He made us into, what IQ He gave us, what emotional IQ He gave us, what artistic, athletic ability, the DNA and the genetics He gave us, all that predisposes us. So that when we think we're making a choice and when we think we're expressing free will, ultimately, we are really just realizing what He had put in place to begin with. So that when we look back on our lives, all we can be and all we're responsible for is right now. But any regret or guilt or shame for the past, those are unhealthy feelings. Because one needs to look at all that and say, I need to learn from it and grow from it and better myself from it, but it's all from above, it's all what was meant to be. Now who do I want to be today? Because that's all that matters. I know it's Erev Pesach, but I'll tell you an Erev Rosh Hashanah vort. As the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah says, אין דונין לאדם אלא לפי מעשיו של אותו שעה, that when we appear before God on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when we prepare all month of Elul and we come before God in judgment for those ten days, what's God judging us for? On Rosh Hashanah when you sit in shul all day, Yom Kippur all day, what are you being judged for? So every young child thinks, wake them in the middle of the night and they'll tell you. What are you being judged for? The past year. Were you a good boy or a good girl, a bad boy, a bad girl? What kind of a year will God give you? God's got the whole video playing of your year, the surveillance camera of your year. What kind of a year did you have? What kind of a year did you have? God is evaluating, but that's wrong. It's entirely wrong. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur are not about the past at all. How could you say such a thing, not about the past at all? The answer is, they're about the present. Now the past informs your present. So if you're sitting in shul thinking about six months ago that great aveira you did and how good it felt and how amazing it was and how much you want to do it again, then it's not the past, it's the present. And God's judging you for that thought and that nostalgia and that wish and that dream and that craving in the present. How could we be accountable for our past? We can't change it. You can't be accountable for things you can't change. What is the only dimension we can change? It's the present. Not even the future, we're not there yet. The present. Present happens to go by really quickly, so the future becomes the present before you know it. But all we live with and all we live. in is the present. And it is the only dimension that God can care about. And it's the only dimension He judges us for. And it's the only dimension we should judge ourselves for is the present. It's an amazing gift. It means you blew it. You walked into the house and you didn't smile. You had a tough day, so you walked into the house and you threw something down and then you started losing it. Who left the toys in the middle of the floor? And what do you mean dinner's not ready yet? And I can't believe that you didn't take care of the dry cleaning like I asked you to four million times. And you lose it. And you're miserable and you raise your voice and you change the entire energy in the house and you blew it. And next week you're going to be so embarrassed when you come to the Emuna Shiur and the teacher asks you have you done your homework and you're going to say I blew it. F. I got a big fail. I blew it. Here's the amazing thing. The moment you realize that, you can stop and turn the page. Say family come gather around. I walked in bad mood wrong mood I blew it. Please can you forgive me? Could we try this again? Could we take this from the top? Could we smile and be happy and joyful? I'm sorry. Let's start again. I'll help you clean up the toys and I can't wait whenever dinner's ready it'll be ready and how was everyone's day and you smile. The fact that every millisecond becomes a new present is an incredible gift from God. It means that the bad millisecond in which we misbehaved became the past really quickly. And we can put it behind us if and only if we make changes in the present. So the present's the only dimension we live in. It's the present is the only dimension that we can be in control of. And yet we all struggle with it. That past just replays so much in our minds. Lori Palatnik, if you were here for her class on Shabbos, she described, I don't know how she knows what happens in my house, but she described exactly the difference between men and women falling asleep at night. Men are snoring before his head even hits the pillow. My wife claims sometimes not only do I fall asleep while she's talking, she claims I sometimes fall asleep while I'm talking. In the middle of a sentence it just tapers off and I'm sleeping in the middle of my own sentence, which I believe. They're very different. And she at 3:00 in the morning is still replaying something from earlier that day, she's fast-forwarding to what will be in a week from now, she's thinking, I said do we have to talk about this now? Really? We can't make this decision now, we can't control this right now, so why would we be talking about this now? Why? We'll get there when we get there, we'll decide when we have to, or we'll know the result when it comes, but not sleeping now will not change anything I could promise you that. It will change a lot, it'll harm you physically, spiritually, emotionally. It's bad for you. It's bad for you. So the only dimension we control is the present. And the present rapidly is changing to the past and the future becomes the present, we can turn the page and create a new present. Now, there are things from the past that influence and impact the present. If a person went through pain in the past, it carries into the present. I'm not minimizing that. I'm not saying well you could turn the page so just be happy all the time and there is no pain and let it go and you lost someone you loved or you lost an enormous amount of money or you went through something that is irreplaceable or irreparable just let it go. I'm the reason those are challenging are not because they were in the past. The very reason those are challenging is because they're still in the present. The Gemara says in Kiddushin: A man says הרי את מקודשת לי על מנת שאני צדיק גמור. So the man who walks out of McDonald's, just ate a cheeseburger, just drank a milkshake on Yom Kippur while I don't know just come up with a scenario with every aveira you could think of. On a cell phone. Right, on a cell phone while embezzling money while whatever fine. Just think of a scenario and then he walks out and he says to a woman with this ring I'm hereby married to you on condition that I'm a tzaddik ga... I'm the most righteous person on earth. And then they come ask a psak, are they married or not married? Is the condition met or not met? Not met. I would have said are you out of your mind? If he said על מנת שאני רשע גמור they'd be married. If he said I'm the most wicked person he fulfills that condition. This is a rasha. He was speaking lashon hara into the cell phone like let's come up with everything. It's Parshas Tazria-Metzora, next week Metzora. So על מנת שאני צדיק, what how could it be? You know what the Gemara says? Mekudeshes. They're married. How are they married? He's he still has the crumbs from the cheeseburger in his mouth. How could they be married? And you know what the Gemara says? The commentary say that that was a moment ago. Gemara says shema hirhur bitshuva. In that very moment when he betrothed when he proposed to her with that condition, he radically changed his mindset. He transformed his very identity. He transformed who he was in a moment. The Rav... Soloveitchik says we have a concept, a prelude, a precursor to teshuva called hirhur teshuva, which is the determination, the decision to do teshuva that precedes the act of doing teshuva, that's what changes us. The simple hirhur teshuva, the decision I want to be different. I'm different. The decision I'm different. That's it, now you're different. It's amazing. In the present. I'm different. Now you're different. It's an amazing thing. Now you hurt someone in the past, you still have to ask forgiveness, why? Because in the present you owe them an apology. In the present you still owe them an apology. Even if they insulted your wife, you still owe them an apology. In the present, not because of the past, but in the present. In the present. So this is all the yetzer hara. Why are we talking about all this? Because we're learning about simcha. And the biggest obstacle that's holding us back from simcha is regret, shame, guilt. It's perseverating and marinating and stewing in the past. And not being able to break through to the present. And to consciously and mindfully live in the present and say there's still pain from the past that I carry in the present, but I'm going to learn how to compartmentalize it. I'm going to learn how to have my moments that I cry and grieve but I'm also going to choose to compartmentalize and like the Reichenbergs choose to be happy and choose to smile and choose to be positive and optimistic and to believe in myself and others and in Hashem. וממילא אין שום קשר בין מה שקרה בפועל לבין מה שאדם עשה או לא עשה ולמה שקרה היה קורה בכל אופן כי כך השם יתברך גזר ולטובה. In the middle of this footnote where he says sometimes we review and we analyze the past and we regret because of the decisions that we made. I should have, could have, would have. But don't stop and realize that you are where you were meant to be and Hashem got you here and if it weren't through that path it would be through another, but you are where you were meant to be and you arrived at the destination that Hashem plugged in its coordinates. אמנם בדברים רוחניים היצר הרע של העצבות יותר חזק. When it comes to the building we could have bought, that's a powerful voice, but when it comes spiritually to the shame, to the guilt, to the regret, to the beating ourselves up it's even stronger. כיון שיש לאדם בחירה אז ממילא אם טעה הוא מצטער מאוד על מה שהיה כי נראה לו שאין מה לעשות וההפסד והרע יהיה לעולם חס ושלום וממילא מרגיש עצבות. We feel a sense of regret. ואת הצער הזה קשה יותר לדחות כי יש בזה אמת מסוימת שהרי האדם אחראי על מעשיו לעשות מצות ולא לעבור עבירות ואם נמנע מלעשות מה שצריך או שעבר עבירה חלילה הוא מחויב לעשות תשובה ולתקן בפועל מה שאפשר ואין זה כמו דבר גשמי שבאמת אין האדם עושה כלום. Again, don't feel regret, don't get stuck, turn the page and say all I can do, all I can control, all I can influence, the only dimension I can live in is right now. What am I meant to do right now? What's next? What's next? You know, it's true in work also. Sometimes I sit, I'm overwhelmed by what was, who I should have or could have checked in and called during Corona, what I could have or should have answered that person when they said that thing, how I could have dealt with that circumstance. Or you sit there and you go, oh my gosh, Shabbos Hagadol, Pesach, phone call, I don't know where to turn to next. And then you have to stop yourself and live life and say okay, all I need to know right now is what's the next thing I need to do. That's it. Is it a phone call? Is it an article? Is it a shiur preparation? What is the next thing I need to do? Not the past, not overwhelmed by the future, but what's the next thing? That's it. That's the only thing. That's a trick towards mindfulness, to living a mindful life. To live mindfully means to not be scattered and fragmented or overwhelmed but to live with what's next. What's next? Am I doing homework with my child because that's what this half hour is meant to be, homework? Halevai it's just half an hour. But this half hour is homework, and then there will be dinner and the meeting and the event and the planning and the decisions that have to be made and the difficult conversation that has to happen but right now all there is is homework. This is what I'm meant to do right now. When I need to do those, I'll do those, but right now this is where I need to be, not only physically but mentally, emotionally, spiritually, this is what I'm meant to do now. What's next? What's next? What's next? That's it. That's what President Bartlet said. What's next? That's it. That's all there is is what's next. That is all there is because you can't turn back the clock and you can't speed up the clock and all we can do is live on the clock in that moment what's next. What's next? And that's not depressing. I have a new present at every moment. How do I want my next present to be? What gift do I want to give myself? How do I want my next present to be? What do I want to do with it? Who do I want to be in it? How do I want to be thought of from it? What legacy of the next present do I want to leave? That's all that we have. Don't let that yetzer hara burst in. Simcha. Be-simcha. It is not an emotion, it is a decision, it is a choice. That doesn't mean that we don't have moments where we're overwhelmed by grief, as you know and as you see I'm a cryer with the biggest of them. You have moments of sadness, grief, of difficulty, and live them and lean into them. That's the present. When you're at a funeral, it'd be inappropriate to be laughing and smiling and skipping and whistling. That's not what your job is in that present. In that present, a shiva call, is to be present with the ones grieving and to be with them in that moment. But it means having the capacity to compartmentalize and to shift. Well, and here but I'm writing this article and I wore the same black suit to the funeral and to the wedding, same black suit worked at both. I just changed the tie in the car in between. I drove right from the cemetery to the wedding and Rabbi Lookstein, zol zain gezunt, just celebrated a major milestone birthday. Rabbi Lookstein taught us in smicha the importance and the art of a funereal tie. You wonder what we learn in smicha. Wearing a proper tie for a funeral, a funereal tie, believe it or not, was a topic of discussion. So I have my funereal ties and the simcha ties. So in the car I changed my tie. Changing your tie is very easy, but changing your mindset is a lot harder. How do you do that? I sat in my car thinking about that in the parking lot outside the wedding, and then it struck me. If the Reichenbergs could go to the upsherin, they could walk into the wedding. And all of us in life can in that present choose the present. We'll get back to whatever was painful in that past. I'm sure it'll make its way back into a new present in the future. But every present we have a choice to make, what do we want that present to be informed? How do we want to feel and believe and be? And that's a choice that we make. 9:00 tonight we're going behind the bema with the great Naomi Nachman, author, chef, and host of a show on the Nachum Segal network. Everyone thinking of Nachum Segal, whose studio suffered a terrible fire, burnt to the ground, wishing him well. We have a special guest host with me for the interview with Naomi Nachman. I'm not going to tell you who she is, other than it's possible she sometimes speak to me at 3:00 in the morning. I'm related to her by marriage, but you don't want to miss it 9:00 tonight. Until next time, stay happy.
