Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. I'd like to share with you a nice thought from Rav Wolbe in Aleh Shor (volume two, page 26). He has a whole essay discussing what the definition of an Adam/a human is, which means we're not talking yet about anything, so to say, religious, but just what the human being possesses. He looks to different places in the Gemara that talk about an Adam, and one of the lines is,
“A man that does not have a piece of land, is not a man, as it says, the heavens belong to God, and the land was given to human beings.”
So there's a connection between land and the human being, and you're not fully a human unless you have a piece of land. Simply speaking, that's why people have a desire to own a home. You want to have a piece of land under your feet. That's the American dream.
But he says there's a deeper explanation- that man's place is on the ground. Man grows and develops from the ground. What does that mean? Rav Wolbe’s teacher and mentor was Rav Yerucham Levovitz, the famed Mashgiach of the Mir in Europe, and he used to say, constantly, that one of the fundamentals of serving Hashem, is
“Just don't climb up to the heavens.” He says there's a great depth to this: When people start serving Hashem, they come with a very strong emotion and feeling that they want to come close to Hashem. They want great ideas and fathom God's greatness. What do they consider as serving Hashem? A heartfelt prayer or a great learning session but acts of kindness and proper etiquette don’t necessarily give them the same thrill.
A person can ignore his real self. He can ignore that he has a body, that he has character traits, and that he has a family and responsibility. Climbing up to the heavens means forgetting your feet in the ground, and that won't be successful. I recently saw a Sfat Emet that says, Just like wicked people forget they have a soul, sometimes people become so holy that they forget they have a body. They're both problems. A person, even in the highest moments, can't forget that he still has to have his feet on the ground; that our world is the world of doing.
This is important for emotional wellness because we always have to remember that we are human beings with our feet on the ground. We can't get delusional (I use that word loosely) that we're angels.
We're not angels. We have to always have our feet on the ground and realize who we are and what our responsibilities are. That's part of being a human being.
He says, “It's possible that the closest connection you'll get to God is through a very dry action.” For example, you might be sitting there taking care of a sick child. You might be measuring the exact amount of medicine, and you need to be totally focused on what you're doing right now. You could be doing CPR- there's no time for high and lofty thoughts, and if you don't have your feet on the ground, you're going to forget about that.
This is a message for the ladies: In this past week's Parasha, there are two great ladies, Yocheved and Miriam, and their nicknames are Shifra and Puah. Shifra made the child clean, and Puah made cooing noises to the child.
“That's the way you describe these great ladies?” asks Hacham Yehuda Ades (he should have a refuah shelemah), “You should call them Sadika and Hasida..Why do we call them Cooers and the Pamperers?” The answer is because those acts of taking care of the children and saving them, that was greatness, that brought them to their mission in life. It’s not always high and lofty. It's with your feet on the ground.
Have a wonderful day.