Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Daily Advice. Thank you to everyone who follows us from all over, Baruch Hashem. Please send us your comments on all the classes that Hashem gives us.
The Gemara writes in Massechet Ta’anit, 7a, that Torah is compared to wine, to milk, and to water. The Gemara asks why it is compared to these three things. The answer is that if a person does not continuously pay attention to them, they can go bad. Wine can quickly turn into vinegar. Milk, as we know, spoils if it is not preserved properly. Water can also become contaminated; dirt might fall into it, as could happen in the streams in those days, and therefore it has to be filtered and cared for.
In the same way, a person might lose the gift he has been given or relinquish it because he does not pay attention. If you want to preserve milk, you plan ahead. If you buy a lot of milk and are going away to a place where milk will not be available, you freeze it. Why do you freeze it? Because that is how you plan ahead and ensure that it retains its freshness.
My friends, today’s topic is distraction—losing focus. A person becomes absent-minded and strays from paying constant attention to his repentance, his obligations, his job, and the tasks he has to fulfill and accomplish in this world. No one really knows exactly what his mission is in this world. We do not know. But we do know that a person has many missions, many missions that the Creator gives him.
A person has a family; that is one small mission. A father gives you a child, and you have to raise him. That is another small mission. He has a wife; that is another small mission. A person has workers, and he has to pay them on time; that is another small mission. A person has to learn. All these many missions, my friends, are part of the larger picture, because God gives a person everything he needs throughout the day in order to endure and encounter what is necessary to fulfill his mission in this world.
Therefore, a person has to make sure not to lose focus. There are many details. A person comes home after a business deal does not go well, and he is upset. He is not nice to his wife and is grumpy with his children. Why? That is a loss of focus. The fact that the deal did not go well had already been determined in Heaven. It was determined that it would not go well. So accept that this is how it happened. But then the person allows it to consume him, and because the deal did not go well, he throws away the entire day.
I know a little child who had a bag of chips. He was enjoying the chips, and suddenly one chip fell on the floor. He became very upset, took the entire bag, and dumped it onto the floor. He is a child; he does not know any better. He became upset that he could not have the whole bag, and then he did not want the bag at all. But there are people who act the same way. One thing goes wrong during the day—it could even be a major problem, God forbid—and the person throws away the entire day. He does not know how to rebound.
A person has to remain focused: “I have a mission. I have a mission in life. I have a mission.” Yes, sometimes there are challenges. Sometimes it is not easy. Sometimes a person has to endure certain things. But at the end of the day, he has to remember that he was placed here for a purpose. A person is faced with constant tests and battles, from all sides: suspicion on one side and poverty on the other. Therefore, a person has to remain focused.
What am I here to do today? Someone says, “Come, do you want to learn a little?” What am I here to do today? Sometimes it is just a matter of arriving at the office a little earlier. Is it really going to make a difference if you arrive a little earlier? Yes, it can make a difference. There is a class today, but I want to go to the beach. Again, what are you focused on?
I am not saying that a person should never relax. It is very important for a person to have peace of mind. You see great Torah scholars who used to go on excursions, go to camp, and take walks. Ravig Damila used to take walks all the time. For him, those walks were like Torah; for us, they would be the greatest class. But a person should not lose focus. He should always remember what he is here for and set out to accomplish it. We will also continue speaking about this.