So in this run up to Rosh HaShana 5772, what’s meaningful life anyway?
It is pretty much the opposite of what one would think because it has nothing necessarily to do with accomplishing BIG things, being a poster boy for gravitas or spending one’s time in nosebleed country gazing from the summit upon those with less than “meaningful pursuits.”
The heimishe version of meaningful life deals with the 95% that isn’t, as if it were, by not sweating the small stuff.
Rav Yitzchak Berkovits tells us that “there is no such thing that is simply a nuisance to be gotten out of the way because everything that comes our way is either a challenge or a lesson.” It is very important that we learn to deal with the mundane, with the mundane running the gamut from the volitional “small stuff” of our everyday existence (paying the bills, car pool and such) to Hashem’s “marching orders,” in the guise of the de rigueur vicissitudes of life that put in, what we perceive to be, an untimely and terminally inconvenient appearance, be it a car that doesn’t start, 23 inches of snow or a myriad of other unanticipated horrors guaranteed to trash our plans.
As we said in EmunahSpeak: PLAN B:
“Our self-absorption notwithstanding, the truth is that this is a theocentric world, which requires us to understand that what we propose to do is actually Plan B. All that other stuff: the flats, the medical emergencies etc. is in reality Plan A, because it obviously reflects the Yad Hashem which is manifesting itself in our lives.
“It’s all a matter of focus.
“It’s all about looking at life’s curve balls as the real Plan A rather the ruination of what we thought was Plan A,” or as Rav Berkovits puts it, “if you really believe that Hashem sends everything, then the small stuff (of Plan A, that flies under the radar of our anticipations) is no less important” than what we perceive to be meaningful activity at any given time.
And given that the small stuff is part and parcel of our daily existence, shadowing us at every turn, the way in which we deal with it will govern whether or not we get our ticket punched for a successful life, as defined by how much real meaning will be subsumed into our “meaningful” lives.
Rav Berkovits tells us that if we do it right, and build from the “small stuff” as opposed to simply enduring it with a pasted on erzatz smile (which is also a madreiga), “then everything is meaningful because there is no goal of greatness that is not built from the bottom,” on its way to the top. “And if you live for something meaningful Hashem will reward you with a meaningful Eternity.”
While patience laced with a positive attitude is usually all one needs to deal with the small stuff that hangs out on the lower end of meaningful life’s continuum, the big stuff at the higher end calls for a gut rehab. The reason why our annual Rosh HaShana plans and goals are basically dead on arrival is because our ability to effectuate them is missing in action from the cheshbon.
And that’s why we keep spinning our wheels year after year with resolutions and plans meant to infuse our lives with meaning on the high end, all of which go nowhere. Last year we took on to learn three hours a night, the year before we sincerely intended to get up every day for the Vasikan minyan, and this year mum’s the word because we’re not budging an inch from Sefer Chofetz Chaim.
“If your goals/plans", says Rav Berkovits, "do not include a systematic approach to changing you, and making you the kind of person that’s going to be able to bring them to fruition then it’s all worthless.”
This isn’t small stuff, and with Rosh HaShana approaching we should be sweating buckets.
