For The Best

How sad, how unnecessary!  This is the absurd reasoning of “all or nothing” that uses the fantasy of the maximum as a trampoline and casts its victims into fatalism and despair.

 

    

 “From now on, we will no longer call this “Satan” but imagination!” Rebbe Nachman

 

Our imagination plays tricks on us, mocks us, and sometimes has unforeseen effects.

 

For example: A man with marital or family problems, with material or health difficulties, God forbid, overcome by his situation, feels paralyzed.  He no longer thinks about improving things, but resigns himself to his failure and sinks into bitterness and distress. He renounces even the little that he could have done.  If you ask him: Why don’t you try at least to do what you can?” he will reply: “What’s the point?  If I had not been overwhelmed by all these worries, I could have been someone, I could have developed.  Now, at this point, I’ve failed in my life.  If I do something or other, what difference will it make?”

 

If we analyze this situation, if we look for the starting point, we find that person was led to such resolute pessimism by his imagination. He imagined that to succeed in life, to arrive at some goal, he had to have several cars, a smoothly run home; he had to be in perfect health, study, become a teacher giving lessons, always smiling, replying to thousands of phone calls …Or he had to become an accomplished saint who is never angry, who passes all his nights in prayer and his days fasting and studying … To each his dream!

 

When he landed in reality, so distant from his hopes, he gave up. Because he could not have everything, he resigned himself to being a nonentity. 

 

How sad, how unnecessary!  This is the absurd reasoning of “all or nothing” that uses the fantasy of the maximum as a trampoline and casts its victims into fatalism and despair.

 

To heal us from this wound or to protect us, let us listen to the Torah.  Thanks to a simple key we will see how to avoid the worst defeatism.

 

Where you are is where God wants you to be, love Him and serve Him with your means and in your precise circumstances.

 

You wanted to become a giant, a rich man, a scholar? Why not!  Is there anything out of reach for the Almighty?  Haven’t we been overwhelmed countless times by miracles, wonders that lifted up the destitute and propelled him to the very top of his most audacious dreams…

 

Meanwhile, if God has decided otherwise, it is doubtlessly for the good of your soul and for the sake of what you have to accomplish. If He has placed you in your situation without many riches, without great wisdom, or without strength, it is precisely so that you will raise yourself up.  And you will be able to do so if you accept the fact that God has designed your situation for your won and true good.  Since the very purpose of this work is to give a boost and awaken life forces, we certainly do not intend to advocate passivity, nor do we wish to praise fatalism.  The acceptance of God’s will does not contradict at all the ideas of positive action.  Reflection, proper consultation, and of course prayer are types of actions favored by believers.  Often sincere supplication will remove the cause of our distress, for that pain was sent to us precisely so that we will turn to our Maker with broken heart.

 

Moreover the submission that we advised, which frees us from revolt and fantasies, has been proven to be the ideal basis for any sincere effort and sound improvement.

 

If we have the wisdom to dispel our rebellions and to reduce somewhat the sacred aura of the illusions, we will feel liberated, able to start over again, from where we are today.  We will discover in ourselves unexpected resources!

 

Then the little that we can do will give us a taste of Eden.  One day we will be surprised by the fortune that we have accumulated through those small savings. If we follow this path, sooner or later, we will come to realize that we have really succeeded in life.

 

When God sees that a person sincerely wishes to mend his ways but lacks the force to bear the difficulties that he must endure to refine himself, at this moment the Almighty wipes the man’s slate clean.  He no longer takes into consideration neither the actual situation nor the damage that must be rectified, but rather, the forces that he man possesses to resist.  He sends him only the torment that he can bear.

 

So when we find difficulties on the road of our progress, let’s remember that these are only a small part of what we should have received to really wipe out the negative part of our past. In His great Mercy, our Father sends us only what we can bear:  if He has sent us these obstacles, certainly we have the strength to overcome them!

 

If we do not succeed in carrying out an action that was dear to us, we should know that the door might be closed at present.  God does not wish to let us in just yet. However, He wants us to go on hoping and searching.

 

Most frequently, the aim of such a refusal is to help us acquire patience and perseverance, the vehicles of enlightenment. If we persist, without our realizing what is happening, the doors of wisdom will open, while excellent receptacles were prepared by our tenacity, in which the light will dwell harmoniously.

 

 

(Used with permission from COURAGE by Israel Isaac Besancon. Published by Shir Chadash Publishers).