Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. We've been talking about how religion gives a person meaning and purpose in their lives. One of the ways it shows up is with the famous dictum that Rav Yisrael Salantar said, “Tun Nisht Uftun/Do, don’t accomplish.”
Our job in life is not to accomplish anything. Hashem doesn't need us. Hashem doesn't us to heal anybody. Hashem doesn't need us to get anybody married. Hashem doesn't need us to teach anybody. He doesn't need us to open Yeshivot. Everything that's going to happen happens because God willed it to be. So why do we do anything? This is actually illustrated by the Midrash Raba in Parashat Baha’alotcha: When God tells Moshe Rabbenu to light the Menorah in the Bet Hamikdash, Moshe says, What's going on? You are the source of all light. We should light something for You?? And he gives a mashal of a man who's leading a blind man along a road. Once they get into the house, it’s dark, and the seeing man tells the blind man “Please light a candle for me.” And he puts his hand on the candle and helps him light it. The blind man says, “You don't need me,” the seeing man replies, “You're right. I don't need you. I'm doing it for you. I want to make you feel needed. I want you to be part of the action. It's for you.” And the same is true with our service to Hashem. He doesn't need us. It's there for us to flex our muscles.
I recently heard a class from Rabbi Yosef Elefant, of the Mir Yeshiva in Yerushalayim, that was addressed to rabbis training to deal in areas of mental health. He said that rabbis are constantly presented with situations of challenge and crisis, and they can become consumed by that.
But, he said, “When crisis comes to your doorstep, you have to know that it's not within your abilities to fix it. If you think you are going to start fixing things, you're going to go crazy. You have to have boundaries.”
He gave an example from his own life. He said he has hundreds, if not thousands, of students that consult with him. He comes to America from time to time and had students coming to see him from early in the morning until late at night. Initially, he was seeing them with unlimited boundaries, and it was taking over 10 hours a day.
Then one year he said to himself, “You know what? I'm not doing it anyway. What I can't do in a half an hour, I can't do in three hours either.” And he decided to set limits and boundaries. And lo and behold, he saw that people that he gave just 30 minutes to were actually getting better faster, because you're not in charge. Yea, you have to put in a certain amount of effort, but you don't have to go to unending limits.
Of course, there will be stories about rabbis that stayed up till two in the morning…. Those are Gedolim. That's not in our bucket, so to say.
This is an important concept because we tend to celebrate only accomplishments.
There’s a famous Chafetz Chaim that says that we say at a Siyum, “They (the outside world) toils and we toil, but we toil and get paid. They toil and don't get paid.” And the question is, “Who toils and doesn't get paid? Everyone gets paid for their work.”
And the Chafetz Chaim says, Imagine you brought a painter to your house, and after a whole day's work, he gives you a bill. But you look around and see the house isn’t all painted.
So he says, “Well, my ladder didn't reach the ceiling, but I tried.”
You're not going to pay him for trying. But God pays for efforts and for toil. We have to remember that. And that gives meaning and purpose. You tried to make a shidduch, you tried to bake a cake, you tried to understand the Gemara. You tried to make peace between husband and wife. You tried. That's all that you have to do, because we don't do anything, and therefore, we celebrate our doing, not our accomplishments.
We're so far from that because the world values accomplishments.
As another example, when a person is running outside, there's a certain feeling of accomplishment. When you run from Avenue J to Avenue T and back, you're moving. But it's hard to run on a treadmill, because you don't really see where you're going.
Without the monitor showing your heart rate, the calories you lost or the miles that you ran, it would be totally impossible. At least you see something. But now they have new machines that have screens on them, to picture yourself running through the African jungle. Or, as you're on a rowing machine, you can actually feel as if you are on a boat, moving along, and you see the scenery moving with you. Now, of course, part of that is just entertainment. It's not as boring that way. But part of it is also that we want to see the accomplishments.
I want to see myself moving through the rivers of Africa, or wherever I may be, on my rowing machine. And that's something that we have to reframe in our brain.
It's not about accomplishing, it's about doing. That religious outlook brings meaning and purpose to life. And, as we said before, meaning and purpose is extremely important to remain mentally healthy.
Have a wonderful day.