Fuggetaboutit!

When I think of this phrase, visions of Italian people eating sausage and pepper hoagies, living in New Jersey come to mind. For those of you in the 30’s and below crowd, you might imagine the cast from “Jersey Shore” laughing rowdily over a few too many drinks, and the conversation might go something like this… “Hey, Pauly, did you see that fine lady?” “Fuggetaboutit!” Pauly responds.
 
I’d heard that Rebbe Nachman was way ahead of his time with his perception and spiritual advice, but I had no idea he would reach into the 21st century with the brilliant infiltration tactics of Donnie Brasco in the New York Mafia. Maybe Rebbe Nachman had some connection to Italy that we were previously unaware of. You might be asking yourselves, “What in the world is she talking about?!”
 
Thanks for asking! It goes like this- before I had kids, I used to pride myself on my brilliant memory, which could recall a phone number I knew six years prior, or which would enable me to reach new and greater levels of procrastination when preparing for upcoming exams. However, these days, I find myself standing in the kitchen, looking around for clues as to what in the world I am doing there. Or many times, my husband asks me to do something, and three seconds later, I completely forget about what he wanted. It drives me crazy! What, does each successive kid take two times the brain cells as the previous one? At this rate, I’m running dangerously low…
 
This is one type of forgetfulness that I’d honestly rather forget about. It is not particularly useful or helpful in my day-to-day life. However, there is another type of forgetfulness that Rebbe Nachman says is actually a good thing. In “Rebbe Nachman’s Wisdom”, he offers a perspective on the benefits of being forgetful. He explains that if a person were to remember all of his deeds in his past lives, he would be so discouraged and ashamed, that he could never find the desire to draw close to Hashem. His prayers and any efforts to connect with G-d would be haunted by his past.
 
Imagine- if you were to approach someone you have tremendous respect for, and you knew they could see all of your misdeeds, how embarrassed would you be to speak with them? Goodness, I feel my face turning red just at the thought! So, when we pray, we are personally conversing with the King of Kings. If we had ripped and dirty clothes on for our meeting, or were wearing mismatched shoes, wouldn’t we feel ashamed in standing before such Perfection and Holiness? This is one reason why we must take care of our physical appearances. G-d gave us the capacity to look presentable so that we can properly present ourselves in front of Him.
 
Now let’s look at this concept from a spiritual perspective. Imagine that all of our deeds follow us around every day, piling up on our backs. If they are negative deeds, they would make our load so heavy, we would walk around completely hunched over, if we could even get the strength to stand up! But what if these deeds were not just passively enjoying a free ride on our backs? What if they were alive, nagging us and taunting us the entire time we carried them around? They would probably all join in on the action, collectively laughing at each memory another deed would bring up. “Hey,” shouts one deed, “remember the time John cheated on that physics test? He still ended up failing! What an idiot!” The rest of the deeds suddenly break out into uncontrollable laughter, “Yeah, that John- he can’t get anything right!” More hysterical laughter.
 
Does my idea sound so crazy? Really? Do you know what’s even crazier? The fact that we do this to ourselves, without any outside help. We taunt, torture, and degrade ourselves all day long, and we’re not even laughing at our own mistakes! Wouldn’t we be better off sometimes forgetting about the bad things we may have done, just for the sake of our own sanity? This is the type of forgetfulness Rebbe Nachman was promoting. Kabbalah teaches us that before we come down to this world, we are shown our past lives and also what we need to correct in this life. Then we actually sign for it, committing ourselves to fixing our past mistakes. And then what happens?
 
We forget everything!
 
This might sound a bit unfair- what was the point of learning and knowing everything if we were just going to forget it anyways? Ah, but this is part of the perfect plan. If we knew everything about the past and our correction, what would be left of our free will? Where would be the struggle of right vs. wrong? How would we overcome temptation if we were already immune to it? However, the reality is that we don’t really forget everything. We still maintain the residue of knowledge about our past, even if we don’t see it consciously.
 
We can see this in our connections with people, careers, and even places. An amazing study on this can be found in Rabbi Zamir Cohen’s “The Coming Revolution”, in which he compares famous musicians, politicians, writers, and even presidents through two incarnations. It turns out that not only do the people share similar features, but their accomplishments were almost identical! We can understand from this that Hashem is always guiding us towards our paths and our personal corrections- we just have to be open to His gentle and subtle methods.
 
More specifically, however, Rebbe Nachman was referring to our forgetfulness about our past lives. We are already sometimes tormented by things we have done. How many times do we wish we could take something back, or undo the damage we may have caused? What do we do as a result of these feelings? We agonize over our mistakes, we beat ourselves up, we convince ourselves we’re horrible people. Is this what Hashem wanted from us? That His beloved creations should spend their time convincing themselves they would have been better off had they never been created? Of course not! Now do you understand what Rebbe Nachman is telling us?
 
It’s bad enough to beat yourself up over things you did in this life that you’re not proud of. There’s no reason to bring up your past lives too. That’s over and done with. Hashem wants you to move on, forgive yourself, and just focus on the positive aspects of your life. Rav Arush tells us that our generation suffers from tremendous self-persecution, and this is one of the greatest obstacles in our connection with Hashem. I’ve gotta give the Evil Inclination credit- he’s a pretty sharp guy. He knows how to make us give up even before we’ve begun.
 
Don’t let him beat you. You are a special, wonderful person, and your misdeeds are not actually a part of you. Any moment of weakness you have succumbed to can be corrected easier than you think. Personal prayer is key- if you want to make a fresh start, you can do it immediately. For more understanding on how to stop being your own worst enemy, listen to Rabbi Brody’s CD’s, “Complete Recovery” and “There’s No Despair in the World”.
 
Next time those annoying negative thoughts want to hitch a ride on your back, just remember Rebbe Nachman’s advice- right now you can start over, so move on and fuggetaboutit!