Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness.
We've been talking about appreciating your mission, and adding purpose and meaning to your life, which is extremely important.
How does one do that when they're in a situation that's quite difficult? I'd like to share a few stories to illustrate.
The first is about an elderly woman, let's say in her nineties, who wasn’t well. She was bedridden, sickly and poor. She had help only one day a week, to get washed up and cleaned.
Every year before Rosh Hashanah, a great Rabbi would come visit her, and she’d ask for a blessing for the New Year, for a long life.
One year the rabbi asked her (surely in the most tactful way) why she wanted to live a long life, given her condition.
The woman responded, “Once a week, a nurse comes and cleans my body, so that I'm fresh and clean and I'm able to make a beracha, For that once a week that I can make a beracha, that’s what I want a long life for.” This woman appreciated an important concept- you don't have to be productive every single second. It's not about every single second. You could be doing one thing in a week.
Hashem has the whole world running, it says, for a few righteous people. And it says the whole world was worth creating for one righteous person.
God created the whole world for Adam and Chava in Gan Eden.
It's not about how many things you do, the Shulchan Aruch says, based on a Gemara in Berachot, as long as you have the right intentions, regardless of whether you do a lot or a little.
The Elder of Kelm said it would have been worth creating the whole world for one person to say Amen once.
God doesn't really care about the amount of time and resources that go into that perfect moment. And that's important to know. Not every second of the day are you going to be feeling, so to say, the meaning and purpose. But that in itself is important.
Another story is about the great rabbi, Rav Yehezkiel Abramsky. He wrote the sefer Chazon Yehezkiel a magnificent work on a part of the Torah sh’ b’al Peh that not many really have clarity on called the Tosefta. He eventually became the chief rabbi in London, then moved to Bayit Vegan and was a Dayan there.
Pre-war, he was a rabbi in Europe and was sent to Siberia. (The Chafetz Chaim even knew when he got out of jail- with ruach hakodesh.)
Rav Shach eulogized him at his funeral and said, “I'm not jealous of the books that he wrote. I also wrote a sefer (on the Rambam). I'm jealous of those difficult years that he survived in Siberia.”
Rabbi Ades told a famous story about Rav Abramsky’s ordeal in Siberia (I don't know if Rav Shach made this additional point): He got up one morning in Siberia and as he was about to say Modeh Ani, he asked himself, “What am I saying Modeh Ani about? I have no Gemara, no Tefilin. I have no Humash, I have no siddur. I'm doing backbreaking labor chopping wood. My hands are cracked and bloody. What am I thanking Hashem for?” And then he thought, “I'm saying Modeh Ani that I can say Modeh Ani. I'm thanking Hashem that at least I can recognize Him to say thank you.” Rav Shach was jealous of that-that realization, that clarity. He wasn't using every second of his day for Avodat Hashem, but he was because he was living his life for the right purpose and the right reason. That's really the job-to find the meaning and purpose in the difficulty, in the suffering.
Sometimes people wonder, What am I doing here? Just the fact that you're still here and you're still doing, you're still pushing on, that is what you're doing, and that's appreciated by Hashem. You might not see it as any great accomplishment, but it is.
We need to reframe this for ourselves constantly, to appreciate and understand what we're accomplishing when it doesn't look like we're accomplishing.