בלבבי משכן אבנה – יומים נוראים
אחת שאלתי...אותה אבקש
בירור מהו הרצון האמיתי
In the month of Elul, to some degree we all feel the inspiration to do
teshuvah. But what are we supposed to do? What is the root of true
introspection?
Everyone wants good things in life: a good wife, a good husband, good
children, good health, good livelihood and a nice house, etc. We can all add to
this list of things we want in life, but it is crucial for a person to ask
himself, when you are done with this list of ten or twenty things, what is the
one most important thing you want in life? If Hashem decreed that you could
have one request automatically fulfilled, what would it be? אחת שאלתי מאת ה' אותה אבקש – you can
have anything in the world. What would it be?
We often hear people say “the main thing is good health. But who usually
says that? Is it the 20 year olds? No, it is people a bit older; as you get
older you appreciate the meaning of good health. But we have to ask ourselves,
what is so important about good health? What does it do for us? Yes we get to
live, but what are we living for? What do we want out of life? Unfortunately, a
person can live until 70 or 80 and never ask himself that question. What is it
all about?
If a person would enter the business world, but without asking or learning
how a business works, he clearly is not set up for success. Similarly, many of
us go through life trying to achieve something worthwhile, but we haven’t asked
ourselves what we are trying to achieve.
The real question is, how much time and effort are we willing to put in to
asking this question?
If a person goes to the doctor and לא עלינו finds something isn’t right with
his blood tests. He will run to do further tests. If that doesn’t help him
figure out the situation, he will go from doctor to doctor, specialist to
specialist to assess the situation and search for remedies. He will be ready to
spend every last dollar for the medicine that will cure him. Why? Simple, it is
for the benefit of his health. Again, what is the health for? To live. So why
live? Are we ready to spend the same amount of time and money to figure out
what we are supposed to be doing with our life?
We all do many mitzvos: we daven, put on tefilin, keep Shabbos, etc. each
to our own level. How are we going to be repaid for these actions? In רוחניות – if he does not want רוחניות then there is no way to reward
him for his actions, because when he leaves this world and comes before Hashem
he will be empty handed; he didn’t want the spiritual reward and his physical
possessions are gone.
If a person is really after the material things in life, then when he comes
before Hashem at 120 he will come with many mitzvos too, but the bais din will
say to him, “we will reward you for your many mitzvos by giving you a new car.”
He has no more use for that and is left empty-handed. Think about this idea for
a moment. What would you say if I told you to go to work for a month and at the
end of the month you are not getting paid your salary? What would you do? What
would you do if after 70 years you didn’t get the payment of your pension or
your entire life’s work? You were living your whole life expecting it! We live
our lives doing mitzvos and expect to get rewarded after we leave this world,
but it isn’t that simple. It is similar to a little boy who did something good
and his father rewards him with a brand new car. He can’t drive for fifteen
years, what is he going to do with it? Or an adult works for a month and then
is paid with a pair of glasses; but he has perfect vision so what use is the
glasses?
Hashem is נאמן לשלם שכר, but who says that we are preparing ourselves to receive the שכר?
Again, we are all busy trying to do good things, but do we know what we
really want? Do we want something that we will be able to be rewarded with and
appreciate in the world to come?
Everyone has a spiritual side, the question is what is the proportion of
his desire for רוחניות vs. his desire for גשמיות. There are many people who wake
up in the morning and worry all day about the גשמיות of life, but spend only a small
amount of time learning Torah, doing chesed or thinking about how to perform
other mitzvoth properly. But what is on their mind all day? Are they worried
about money and physical pleasures or are they sad that they don’t have more
time to learn or do chesed? Again, we have to ask ourselves, what is it that we
really want?
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