Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. We continue talking about hope.
David Hamelech, in Tehilim 130,5 says,
קִוִּ֣יתִי ה׳ קִוְּתָ֣ה נַפְשִׁ֑י וְֽלִדְבָר֥וֹ הוֹחָֽלְתִּי׃
I hope to Hashem, my soul hopes to You. And then he says,
נַפְשִׁ֥י לַאדֹנָ֑י מִשֹּׁמְרִ֥ים לַ֝בֹּ֗קֶר שֹׁמְרִ֥ים לַבֹּֽקֶר׃
My soul hopes to you, more than the night -watchmen watch for the morning.
Rabbenu Yona asks about the seeming redundancy in the wording.. I hope to You, Hashem, my soul hopes?
And he says in Mishleh (chapter 3) that there's a concept where a person's
Middot or outlook, you can even call it cognition, becomes automatic. We call that automaticity. For example, when a person is driving, they don't have to calculate every move. It becomes automatic. When you're riding a bicycle, or do anything again and again, it becomes automatic. There are certain behaviors that become automatic.
I once heard a great mashal- it's like when you go down a ski slope. If you take the same track again and again and again, your skis make an indentation, and naturally you're going to stay in those tracks, because to change, it takes effort. You naturally revert to the simple track. Our brains are similarly wired. We can change our brains, as we see with the psychological concept of neuroplasticity, but it takes time and effort. That’s the psychological terminology.
In Rabbenu Yona’s terminology, he says there are things that are in your brain, things that are in your heart, and things that are in your Nefesh/soul. Your brain is your intellectual cognition. Your heart refers to your emotion. Your nefesh refers to the animal instinct or the instinct of desire.
Just like you have a natural, intuitive desire for water when you're thirsty, there are certain things that become natural. And, says Rabbenu Yonah, we can make hope natural. That means קִוִּ֣יתִי ה׳ I keep on hoping, to the point that קִוְּתָ֣ה נַפְשִׁ֑י/ it's automatic. When a situation comes up, I automatically react with hope. This is an unbelievable concept. We can make hope natural, but he says it only happens with constant repetition.
He says, people make a mistake and only hope for God on big things, like, “ I don't want to miss my plane.. or, I don't want to miss my appointment.”
But for getting to shul, or getting a parking spot, we might not constantly invoke hope.
He says, A person has to have hope on every detail. And by continuously doing that, you're training yourself; you’re strengthening your hope muscles, so that hope becomes automatic. On a Kabbalist level, Rav Moshe Chaim Luzatto, the Ramchal, author of Mesulat Yesharim, wrote an essay on hope, in which he says that “When something becomes automatic, it remains with you even after you pass on.” And therefore, he says, in the world to come, if a person is judged to go to Gehinom, then he will be thrown into Gehinom, but if he naturally hoped to God, then, because that became his natural, automatic reaction, God will help him and pull him out of Gehinom. What a concept!
That's what hope does. Hope is not just a nice, psychological panacea.
Hope actually does things. Hope can pull a person out of Gehinom.
Hope can bring salvations. Like we said, LShuatcha Kiviti Hashem
The Ramchal further says something fascinating on hope.
He says, the man who hopes is always happy, he's never in pain and he's always hoping for something better. And even if it takes time, he has patience. וְאַף עַל פִּי שֶׁיִּתְמַהְמֵֽהַּ עִם כָּל זֶה אֲחַכֶּה לּוֹ בְּכָל יוֹם שֶׁיָּבוֹא
I'm going to wait for Him.
And he says, The hope gives him life. This was written by the Ramchal, way before psychoanalysts,
“And anyone who lost all hope, Miyad Met/ will immediately die.”
Fascinating.
That's the concept of hope. Hope brings life, and the lack of hope can bring death.
As we have been discussing in our mix between psychology and religion, if you don't believe in God and you don't believe in Him helping you and you don't rely on Him, it's very hard to be always hoping for something better.
And he quotes the pasuk, “Even when I sit in darkness, Hashem Or Li/God is my salvation, God is my light.
Even in the darkness, because I'm hoping to Him. Hope lights up the situation.