Last night I spoke of happiness as a choice. Of how the degree, to which we are willing to
count our blessings determines, to a great extent, our destiny in life. Of how each one of us can reach deep within
ourselves for the sufficiency that each one of us possesses…unless and until we
have obliterated it over time. I
mentioned the symptom of people who, by conventional measure, should be the
happiest people on earth. And yet, their
actions reveal that they are patently miserable despite everything, with which
they’ve been blessed.
The converse is
often true. Every one of us probably
knows someone who, despite great privation, is able to achieve true
happiness. We look at such individuals
and we wonder; what is it that enables that person to achieve what eludes most
others?
Of course, just
because there are people who have so much yet are unhappy, and people who have
so little yet are happy, does not mean that we must look at ‘conventional
wisdom’ as being the opposite of reality.
And what counsels against that viewpoint is that most of us are neither
fabulously wealthy nor hopelessly destitute.
And yet happiness eludes so many of us. The truth is that, conventional wisdom simply
has no connection to reality. So if our
quest for happiness is to bear fruit, we simply must reject conventional wisdom
altogether.
I spoke last night about lists we
mentally make. One list might include
everything we have. The other, everything
we don’t have. Happiness is not in
proportion to the length of the first list, so long as we keep in mind the
second. Because no matter what our
station in life, the second list will always be longer than the
first. So the solution is to forget
about the first list altogether. And to
be constantly mindful of how much is contained on the first list. And to be thankful for it.
Last night I mentioned
how this week’s Torah reading lays out, in part, a formula to reach for
happiness. It’s simple. Enjoy, but never forget your
obligations. Avoid the extremes of
asceticism and hedonism. The road to
happiness passes through the vast territory in the middle.
But in truth, we
need not look past the opening verses in our parashah to see a Divine
truth regarding the ultimate outcome of our lives. See, I present before you today a blessing
and a curse. The blessing, that you
hearken to the commandments of Hashem, your G-d, that I command you this day. And the curse, if you do not hearken to the
commandments of Hashem your G-d, and you stray from the path that I command you
today, to follow the gods of others, that you did not know. (Deuteronomy 11.26-28)
This dictum, if we
consider it at all, can easily lead us to torpor. After all, we don’t go around worshipping
other gods…do we? We know that, in the
ancient Near East, the peoples worshipped a multiplicity of gods which resided
in various temples and which were served by the priests and other functionaries
of the various pagan cults. That doesn’t
describe us at all. We come to
Jewish worship exclusively. And we pray
from the Jewish siddur which talks about the indivisibility of Hashem. And we do not add sacred books to the
Torah. So, at least on the surface, this
caution is not talking about us.
But it is. Because the essence of avodah zarah, or
idol worship, is not using statuary to represent G-d. Rather, it is trust in material objects to
provide our salvation. And that is
something that we all do. So we’re told
to eschew asceticism. But we’re also
warned about hedonism. And hedonism is,
for most of us in our world today, the idolatry of choice. It doesn’t feel like the idolatry that
the Torah is cautioning us against. We
don’t literally bow down to our possessions, and beg them to save us. The way that the ancients did to the statues
in their temples. But if we’re honestly
reflective, we can see how we rely on possessions to lead us to wholeness. And equally, if we’re honest we can see the
futility in this reliance.
So this dictum, to
serve only Hashem and not gods that we do not know, is easy to dismiss as
irrelevant to us. As having to do with
someone else. For example, the followers
of the religions that we see as being in error.
But we would be well-advised that the opposite is true. That the mindset represented by idolatry is a
common pitfall in life. And even those
who are outwardly loyal only to Hashem, are subject to it.
But there is another
common pitfall, and it explains why I pound this theme again and again. Some of you will listen to my repeating this
theme and ask themselves: does he
think we’re all crass materialists? And
the answer is a responding no! But we
don’t often give ourselves the credit for possessing the good values and
balance that we already have. And not internalising
the merit from comes attached to it, is effectively the same as not having it. One might look to those around him, like
someone who has his priorities straight.
But inside, he is suffering.
Because he still sees himself as lacking. Because whilst he behaves in ways that are
praiseworthy, he does not count his blessings.
Today, let us look
at the choices arrayed before us. There
is blessing and curse in those choices. Almost
nobody deliberately chooses curse!
Nevertheless, the choices that we make lead ultimately to
blessing…or curse. Sometimes, we must
look beneath the surface, away from the obvious, to understand the nature of
our choices. This morning, the Torah
reminds us of the consequences. Choose
blessing. And you shall be
blessed. Shabbat shalom.
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