On page 299, he's trying to emphasize and drive home the concept that much of our life is an illusion. A person wants to get themselves some degree of self-control, which is going pretty shoot, and say to himself, “I don't need to be involved in obsessive material.” Step one is to see these things for what they are. All the excitement, the things, the color, the glitz, the glamour, the advertisements—it's all an illusion. It's all people painting a picture a certain way to pull us in. That was true then, and it's a thousand times more true today, because the entire world is trying to pull us in. How do they get us to buy anything? How do they get us to like a certain product? How do they get us excited about something? Even if it's real, the first step is to lure you in. Without luring you in, nobody will get you interested in the first place. And that part is based on the eyes, based on the illusion. A person has to realize and understand: if I'm being pulled in because of what I'm seeing, that means this element of dimyon—if my main attraction is in my eye, it's not because my eye is seeing the truth; it's rather because my eye is seeing something in a certain light that's pulling me in. If you're basing it on dimyon, you know that dimyon is all sheker (falsehood). Dimyon is imagination, and you have to recognize imagination for what it is, which is completely false. That being the case, you're less pulled in, less attracted to all material things.
Again, he writes at the bottom of page 299. This is the main limud (learning): a person needs to teach himself to recognize the false material attractions and realize how weak and fake they are. Therefore, you'll naturally be turned off by these things. It won't be difficult to avoid them.
I'll give you an example. You make a product, any product. Now you see people going crazy over it. You can't understand it. They look almost crazy. They're going nuts over something. You know the background, you know what it's made of, you know the material, you know it's nothing. And the same thing is true in any area of life. You recognize how imaginary these things are and how much they're really trying to pull your eyes, and then you'll be able to see them for what they are.
For example, the enjoyment of food. It's a classic example, a tangible and palpable example, but still. The guy loves food. The guy has a dairy problem, but he happens to like eating dairy. He goes ahead and has a yogurt, then his stomach kills. Has a yogurt, his stomach kills. Right beforehand, he's in the mood; right afterwards, he regrets it, right? And even if his stomach doesn't kill, it is what it is, and he goes, “That's it.”
So this is a clear example of how our eyes and our advanced mindset—you can call it eyes, you can call it excitement, whatever you want to call it—are so much larger than reality. What is the size of the food? The size of your throat. That's it. The moment it goes down, you forget its existence. And it's forgotten as if it never existed. You eat equally food, whatever food you eat. It makes no difference if you had awesome food or bland food. You're equally full.
Add to that even the possible illnesses that come from bad food or the heaviness a person feels. You go to a restaurant—it happens to me every time I go to a restaurant—the food tastes great. By the time I'm in the car, I feel funny, every time. All these different things come from the fumes and the excessive eating and all these things. We have no real interest. If our mind beforehand utilized the approach we have after the fact, the way we think after the fact, we would have no interest. Because it's good, it's not a real good, especially if it's unhealthy. And it's bad, it's definitely bad. Clear case.
A guy eats unhealthy foods, fattening foods. Beforehand, he's going for it. Afterwards, he feels funny. There's a classic example of this concept where our eyes, our generative approach, our looking forward are made up of an imaginative look. It's all false. It's all being pulled in.
Now, people often take this to an extreme, and they definitely become cynics and very simple and very anti-any-enjoyment. That's not the point. The point is, there is no way logically that I can be pulled in, that I can be drawn in. If you think about all the excitement that you have in advance of things, in advance of something, you go over the top, right? You spend money you don't have, or, you know, you overspend. We waste a lot of time preparing for something. Our mind is constantly on that thing. Let's say it's a vacation, right? In advance of the vacation, I spend a lot of time planning, spend a lot of money on it. Your mind is on it all the time. You think you might in the comments in the comments when they come now. If you realize this idea that the advanced approach is based on the eyes, the eyes are based on imagination, and imagination is pulling us in, then all the excess that we put into that would not be worth it. And all the extra time and effort and money that we put into that thing would not be worth it.
Now, it doesn't mean every vacation was a waste of time. It doesn't mean that. But understand, why are you going on vacation? For the simple reason that you need to relax. You need time with your family. That's it. You're not going on vacation because it's going to be the be-all end-all. No. You're not going on vacation because that excitement of that moment is worth it all. Absolutely not. You're going because of the reasons that you feel after the fact. The reasons you feel after the vacation are: it was good to get away; it was good to have some of my family; it was good to relax and unwind. Those are the reasons after. Those are the reasons before.
The same is true of the restaurant. The reason you go out to eat: it's good to spend time with your wife. It's good for your wife not to have to prepare food that day. It's good to have an outing, whatever version and effect the outing has. It's good to go out and then come back home. There's something there. That's it. That's the whole thing. It's not about, “Oh, there's steak,” and, “Oh, oh my gosh, I gotta get there, I gotta get to that spot, and oh, I have to be seen,” and all those other excess things are things that, when the time is over, don't exist.
So the beauty of this midah (trait) is to look at life in advance with the same approach that you know you're going to have after the fact. Same with vacation, same with spending money on something. As you know, a person spends a crazy amount of money on a car and you're stretching yourself a little thin. Okay, now imagine yourself two months into having that car. The excitement will fade, right? Or someone else has it. Whenever that moment is when the excitement fades, you look back and say, “The advanced thing wasn't necessary.” And that has to be our approach. It's an even-keeled, level, balanced, normal, careful approach, and avoid extra excitement. Well, it avoids extra excitement, but it also avoids excess connection to these things, because if I'm looking at these attractions with the right frame of my mind, yes, I'm going to enjoy them. We're meant to enjoy the entire world. I'm going to enjoy them, but they're not going to consume my life, and I won't ever have the other negative effect, which is dependency, right?
Let's play this out. If a guy spreads himself thin on vacation, it's a vacation, and he goes into debt, right? Any chance he's going to enjoy that vacation after it's over? After the vacation's over, and now he has to pay back those people and work extra to pay back those loans, there's no chance there's any residue of enjoyment, right? I don't think any person can have a split brain, which is, “I enjoy the time off, but now I'm going to have to work extra hours to pay that money back.” No, not possible.
There are people. “There are people like that?” Okay, it's a unique brain. I can't live that way. I will not be able to enjoy something if I'm now, after the fact, spending extra effort to make money to pay that back. Crazy. Right? So then that means, after the fact, your mind—normal mind, at least my mind; I'm calling myself normal—would be clear and say, level-headed, that wasn't worth it.
It'd be nice if in advance we could drill into ourselves and our family that whatever we're going to think after the fact is what we want to think beforehand. I think about this all the time. People spend money on things that they shouldn't spend money on, and then they have something go on in their family and they say to themselves, “I'm sure whatever I just experienced, this excitement was completely gone because of what I'm dealing with now.” It could be a small thing or a big thing. Whatever it is, it takes over my life, and that enjoyment was completely wiped away.
So now, in advance, you can never know what's coming, but in advance it'd be nice if you have a level-headed mind. Level-headed mind: everything that you do that's enjoyable is something that will last forever, which means taking a walk, peaceful; going out to eat for the right reason, peaceful; going on vacation for the right reason, peaceful; whatever it is, building something beautiful for the right approach because I want my family to be by me. The regular, normal reasons and regular, normal mindsets—if those are the logics, in advance you're going to do everything right. If in advance you go a little crazy, and afterwards you come back to earth, there will be a lot of mistakes made.
You know how the guy, while he's engaged, gets super excited and super to you? All right, will you like that, Sammy? “No.” “When you're engaged?” “No. Actually, to you?” “What does that mean?” “It's been a long time.” “Huh? What does that mean?” “That means he's going to go the extra mile for his fiancée.” “Nah, I was way too old.” “Too old?” Okay. An average-age guy, especially if he's in his young 20s, early 20s, goes the extra mile because the advanced imagination of what's coming is so exciting, it's pulling him in.
Afterwards, like we all do, you look back at those couples—of course, Hashem, healthy marriages that we have. We look back at those couples and we look at them, we look at them head over heels, and, yeah, you laugh a little bit. You see them dating or you see them walking together or you see them, I don't know, whatever it is; they were all actually excited, and he started laughing, he started like, you know, “That's cute. That was you exactly.” You look, but that is the difference between the before and after. And it's great to have a very healthy, balanced life, but also realize in advance you don't want to be silly in other areas.
Now, a silly engagement is necessary because the girl needs a wife happy life exactly, right? With a balanced, normal approach. So moderation, everything is moderation. Everything is the way you would think after the fact. It should be the mindset beforehand. That's as simple as that.
So what's the residue, the result of going out to eat? What's the result? What does it do for you? You're sitting with your wife, your family. It's nice. Good. That's why we go out to eat in the first place. That's it. Not because I want to be seen at that spot or I want to get to that spot or because I need to have this steak. Those reasons are silly. Those reasons go out the window because next week—never mind—we'll come up again. You won't even have the after approach from last week, and you'd be more focused on, “I need the next steak or the next place or the more expensive spot,” etc., etc. That's all the advanced mind. That is the world of advertising. It's the same brain. It's advanced. It's an anticipation of, it's excitement, it's preparing for something to come out. That's all a fake world, and that pulls us in and then pulls us down. Or, as a balanced, healthy mindset, yeah, we're excited, but we're excited because we're and have the feeling that will stay with us after the fact. That's the concept. Is that clear? Have you?
He says you'll be equally happy and full whatever food you eat. Then we read on 3.01. He says, “I'll call it,” all these examples: people don't really want these things. People don't want the stomachache, they don't want the headache, they don't want the debt, because it's not really good. It's true with food, it's true with all worldly pleasures. Any worldly pleasure you know of is temporary, and at times the negative thing that's related to these worldly pleasures is way worse. It therefore will not make any sense. No temporary excitement is worth long-term negative ramifications that can come from it. And this is the healthy approach to realizing in advance that I want to have the balanced approach after the fact. So I'll see this, stop with this...