Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness.
There’s a concept that I once read about in the secular world called the Study of the Living Human Document, which says that just like we study texts and materials, we need to study the human being, not as a document, but as a living document- a human being is something to study. This term, the study of the human document. was coined a bit over a hundred years ago and was considered a hiddush-a new approach. But this concept, the study of the human document, is really what Mussar is all about, and it obviously predates this term by hundreds, if not thousands of years. Rav Wolbe writes about this in his sefer Alei Shur (vol 1). He says that nobody can teach you about yourself. You have to study yourself. Studying the human document means not only studying others, as therapists may do, but the first human document that you really need to know is yourself. That is why good therapists are in therapy- because just like there's Gemara, Rashi and Tosafot, man is a sugya as well. Man also has to be learned and understood. And there's supposed to be a connection between what we learn and who we are. That's what Mussar is all about. We need to understand that there's a depth to a human being and therefore human beings need to be studied. Sometimes you look at somebody and say, I don't understand what's going on over there. And sometimes you see a person on one level, but there are multiple levels.
Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky actually uses a very interesting terminology.
He's talking about when the Gemara or Midrashim are doresh a derasha that's negative on a person. For example, when Lavan ran to Yaakov, the Gemara says he was running to check if Yaakov had money- he hugged him to see if maybe he was hiding valuables, and he kissed him because maybe he had jewels in his mouth.
These are horrible things to do. On the simple level, what we call the pshat, he really was hugging and kissing him. That's true.. he was. But that's on the pshat level. And the pshat level is not just the pshat level in how to understand pshat of the pasuk, but there's a pshat in the person himself. That means a person has the simple level of his actions, a deeper level, and yet a deeper level. And just like in Torah, where there is the pshat, what the simple level says, the remez is what is hinting, doresh, and the sod, which is the secrets of the Kabbalah, within every person's actions, is all of that.
Therefore, Rav Wolbe says that everybody needs a personalized approach in their Avodat Hashem/their service of God, because every person is a different document. This is a topic that will take more than just a few minutes to understand. For now we're just opening up the concept to understand that everybody has to look at themselves like a book.
Just like you have to study a book, you have to study yourself. And just like sometimes you don’t understand the book and you might need a helper or a teacher, you don't always understand yourself either, because there are layers and layers and layers. That is the living document of the human being.