Your Own Track

Translated by Rabbi Lazer Brody

The best and only way to truly find yourself and your special talents, as well as find your own unique path in life, is by investing an hour a day in personal prayer. Rebbe Nachman teaches that personal prayer is a act that surpasses all others, for personal prayer is the greatest expression of your own individual service of Hashem.
 
Personal prayer is our daily chance to truly express our individuality. No one speaks to Hashem on a personal level like each one of us does.
 
Rebbe Nachman explains that when a person does daily personal prayer, self-assessment, and confession of wrongdoing, while expressing his deliberations and aspirations, Hashem leads that person along his own special path in life that's conducive both to attaining his soul correction and to accomplishing his task on earth. One's connection to a true tzaddik, a righteous spiritual guide, facilitates this as well.
 
The words of personal prayer aren't written anywhere except on the walls of an individual's heart. There is no greater manifestation of one's individuality. Personal prayers are the ones that are readily accepted because they're said with intent and in earnest. The path of personal prayer is not the beaten path of the masses; it's your own invigorating trail in an enchanted garden.
 
Not only does personal prayer differ from person to person, but it changes from day to day. We strive to be in constant growth, both spiritually and emotionally. We aren't the same people who we were yesterday. Not only that, but the world around us has changed since yesterday. Each day brings new circumstances and new challenges. For that reason, daily personal prayer is so very important.
 
While we are all obligated to observe all the mitzvoth of Torah, personal prayer – our daily outpouring of the soul in our language and our daily discussions with Hashem – enables us to express our individuality and to feel our uniqueness.
 
The Hebrew word for unity is achdut, yet the word for similarity is achidut. We must never confuse the two. Sure, we must maintain unity and love one another, but we must not yield our individuality by bending to depends of being similar to everyone else. Personal prayer is the ideal way for one to express one's uniqueness and to connect to Hashem on a personal individual level.
 
Our sages teach us to refrain from passing judgment on other people. Just as we've learned that each of us is unique, we can't estimate another person's difficulties. Just because his challenges in life might look easy to us, we can't fairly pass judgment until we're in his exact circumstances. Even more so, none of us know what the other person's soul correction and mission on earth are exactly.
 
Why be jealous of others? We obviously can't judge them properly, so who can say that someone else is more successful? Hashem gives each person what he needs; why be jealous than another person has a plow if he's a farmer and we're an accountant? Since when does an accountant need a plow? Maybe this example seems somewhat ridiculous, but when we look at envy and jealousy through spiritual eyes, they are truly ridiculous.
 
A person must feel that Hashem created the world especially for him. That doesn't mean that we must feel smug and egotistical, Heaven forbid, but that we should know that Hashem gives us an entire set of tools and circumstances which are conducive to accomplishing our needed soul correction and our mission on earth.
 
One's mission in life can be compared to a railroad track. A person who is doing the right thing is “on track” while someone who is off on a tangent, either wasting time or dabbling in matters of no consequence is “off track.”
 
The train from New York to Washington has its own special track. If somehow it began moving southward on the track that's intended for the use of the northbound Atlanta-to-Boston train, there will be a disaster. In like manner, as soon as any of us attempt to traverse a path in life that's not our own, we not only fail to reach our own destination and attain our own goal, but we certainly don't succeed in fulfilling the other person's mission. In short, when we're off track we either get totally lost or suffer all types of collisions in life – emotional, spiritual, and even physical. This is yet another reason not to envy or compare ourselves with any other person on earth. We should certainly refrain from the gross unfairness of comparing our spouses to other people's spouses, comparing our children to other people's children, or even comparing our children to each other. Such comparisons are destructive. Parents must remember that just as each of them has an individual mission on earth, each of their children have individual missions and soul corrections on earth. Comparisons to other are therefore both cruel and unfair.
 
When a person attains the level of spiritual awareness that even his shortcomings are for the very best, he never tries to “jump track” and pursue someone else's path. Clearly, if a person was born with weak eyesight, then he wasn't meant to fly an F16; being a fighter pilot is not his mission in life, so why be jealous of a person with 20-20 vision? Several world-famous musicians were blind or crippled; their physical handicaps did not hinder them in the least from pursuing their mission in life.
 
In light of the above, don't ever lose heart because of what you think is a lack of talent and dexterity. And, don't have pipe-dreams of being someone else. Focus on your own unique talents and aptitudes without comparing yourself to any other person. Concentrate your energies on doing the best with the tools you now has at your disposal, and with Hashem's help, you'll succeed!