Building Our Eternity
One of the most life-altering things I’ve ever read is a section in the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, where the author distinguishes between two kinds of activities: the urgent, and the important. The “urgent” matters are those pressing needs which require our attention right now, whereas the “important” things are those which are the most significant to us in the long run.
To properly understand this distinction, let us consider the example of a business owner who is looking to hire a manager who will run and build the company for the next twenty years. He is sitting in his office interviewing a candidate with outstanding credentials, who may very well be the one who can move the company forward and make it boom for many years into the future. Suddenly, the owner’s phone rings. He picks it up, and it’s his wife, asking him to pick up some milk on the way home. The man interrupted one of the most important things he’ll ever do – interview a prospective manager of his company – to tend to something urgent – answer a call from his wife.
The book shows that to be effective, one must keep a proper perspective on what’s urgent and what’s important. Too many people spend their lives doing “urgent” things – earning a living, shopping, eating, sleeping, running errands, and so on, without allocating time for the “important” things, for nurturing their inner selves, for building their future through learning and personal growth. Our challenge is to ensure that we do not devote our entire lives to the “urgent” matters without giving time to the “important” matters.
נצח
The fourth week of the omer period corresponds to the quality of נצח, which means “eternity.” This quality is associated with Moshe Rabbenu, who visits our sukkot on the fourth day of Sukkot, because he brought us the Torah, which is eternal. The concept of נצח is also associated with the fourth day of creation, when G-d made the sun, moon and stars. Unlike everything else in nature, the luminaries in the heavens are eternal and everlasting. All vegetation, like humans and animals, eventually dies. The sun, moon and stars, however, endure and remain perfectly intact forever, without ever experiencing any sort of decline or decay. And thus they embody the quality of נצח, eternity.
What does נצח mean to us? How do we build our eternity?
We become “eternal” by engaging in “important” matters, rather than consuming all our time with “urgent” matters. When Moshe Rabbenu brought us the Torah, he gave us the ability to be eternal, to build our inner selves, to make ourselves something important and meaningful.
It’s no secret that many American celebrities are unhappy people. They have all the money, fame and prestige a person could ever hope for, but they’re miserable, and so many of them turn to drugs and alcohol to deal with their pain and loneliness. The reason for this, I believe, is because after the concert or ballgame, after the 2-3 hours of exhilaration and glory as thousands of fans are cheering them on, the celebrity returns home and is alone. There he or she does not enjoy any fame. Sure, people around the country and around the world are talking and writing about him, but now he is alone. And he feels empty and unfulfilled, because all he has is his money and fame. He has spent all his time and devoted all his energy to earning money and fame, without cultivating his inner self and his inner identity. And this brings a painful lack of fulfilment and emptiness.
Building eternity means building our inner selves so that when we are all alone standing in front of the mirror, we can look at ourselves and feel happy and fulfilled. It means finding meaning and purpose in our lives so that no matter what we go through, and no matter what we lose, we still feel special and important.
Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai in the Cave
One of the greatest examples of נצח is Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, whose passing is commemorated on Lag Ba’omer.
The Gemara tells the famous story of how Rabbi Shimon was forced to flee from the Roman authorities with his son, and ended up spending twelve years in a cave. Throughout those twelve years, Rabbi Shimon and his son did nothing but study Torah together. All they ate was some fruit from a carob tree that grew outside the cave, and they drank water from a nearby spring. Besides that, they had nothing, and they spent all their time learning Torah.
This is the embodiment of the quality of נצח. For those twelve years, Rabbi Shimon and his son did almost nothing “urgent”; they were entirely engrossed in the “important.” They spent their time exclusively on developing their inner selves. And when we focus on developing our inner selves, then we can find contentment and fulfillment even when we are stuck in a cave with nothing.
The story continues that after twelve years in the cave, Rabbi Shimon and his son heard that the Roman government was no longer trying to arrest them, and so they left the cave. They saw people out in the fields trying to make a living, and they were stunned. Wherever they looked, fire was ignited and began consuming everything in its path. A heavenly voice then came and ordered them back into the cave, where they spent another year learning Torah.
We can perhaps understand what happened by drawing an analogy to an experience which we all have from time to time: we’re sitting with people and listen to them having a serious, detailed conversation about something utterly meaningless. Sometimes we hear people going into detail about food, comparing the different styles of different foods served in different restaurants. Or we hear people going into detail about different hair styles, or different styles of clothes. We sit there and we ask ourselves, “Who cares? Is this really so important? Do these things really matter? Is this what you want to spend your time discussing?”
This was precisely Rabbi Shimon and his son’s reaction upon seeing people working for a living. After spending twelve years doing nothing but learning, involving themselves exclusively in the “important” work of building themselves and their eternity, they could not imagine why anybody would want to spend time producing grain. The difference between “urgent” and “important” was so obvious and so crystal clear that they simply could not bear the sight of people “wasting” their time on work.
Rabbi Akiva’s Five Students
The other paradigm of נצח is Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai’s teacher, Rabbi Akiva.
Lag Ba’omer is known as the day which celebrates the end of the tragic plague that killed Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 students. The plague struck during the first weeks of the omer period, ending on Lag Ba’omer, and for this reason Lag Ba’omer is celebrated as a joyous day.
At first glance, this seems very difficult to understand. The only reason why the plague ended is because all the students had died. There was nobody left. Is this a cause for celebration? Is there any reason for us to rejoice because Rabbi Akiva had no more students that could have been stricken with this deadly plague?
The answer lies in the continuation of the story. The Gemara tells that after the plague, Rabbi Akiva found five new students with whom he began studying: Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Yossi, Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. The Hid”a writes that it was on Lag Ba’omer when Rabbi Akiva began studying with his new students, and this is why we celebrate on this day. It is through these students that Torah study continued and flourished, and thus we observe Lag Ba’omer, the day Rabbi Akiva began teaching these disciples, as a day of special festivity.
Rabbi Akiva lost everything he had built over the course of more than two decades. He invested so much to lead the largest yeshiva, only to see it destroyed. But he did not despair or fall into a paralyzing depression. He realized he still had his own self, his inner being, all the Torah knowledge he had amassed and all the talents he had cultivated. And thus no matter what he lost, he was able to move on. He was like a strong, robust tree that has lost all its fruit and leaves, but has the capacity to produce plenty more. And so rather than wallow in despair, he went ahead and continued onward, producing five outstanding Torah leaders through whom Torah scholarship blossomed.
This is what we celebrate on Lag Ba’omer. We celebrate that inner self which we all can and must build, that inner being that gives us eternity, that gives us a sense of meaning and fulfillment no matter what we are going through and or what we lose.
Selling Google for $1 Million
It is told that Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders and owners of Google, decided to sell the company around a year after it was started. The prospective buyer decided against the transaction, because he felt that the asking price - $1 million – was too high. And so instead Larry and Sergey continued building the company, which is now worth many billions of dollars.
Like the famous fable of the farmer who foolishly slaughtered his chicken that laid golden eggs, Larry and Sergey nearly sold their company that had the potential to lay countless golden eggs for decades to come.
Unfortunately, many of us make this very mistake. Rather than use our time to build ourselves, to build our futures by developing our inner “tree” that has the potential to produce “fruit” for many years to come, we instead forfeit this potential for far less valuable pursuits. Our challenge is to take some time each day to do something which has become very uncommon and unpopular in today’s day and age: stop for a few minutes and think. We should put away our phones – yet, put away our phones, ignoring calls and texts – to spend some time thinking about the important matters of life – who we are and who we want to become; what we want to see when we look into the mirror ten or twenty years from now.
There’s a saying that goes, “Wealth is not what you have, but what you are.” We achieve eternity by taking some time out from worrying about what we have, in order to worry about who we are. Let us make time for the things that are truly important, and we will then acquire real, everlasting wealth, that will remain with us forever, for all eternity.