Very educational to be sure, but what about the vast majority of us who are Beinonim? To where did we disappear?
Beinonim, in the view of the Tanya, have the same spiritual DNA as the Rasha’im, and as such, they are essentially nothing more than a variation on the Rasha’s theme. They are presented with the same challenges, but whereas the Rasha marches in lock step with the flow of his evil inclinations, the Beinoni does his best to paddle upstream against that current, as he contends with the Yetzer Hora in a perpetual turf war for his neshama.
And the word perpetual is not a literary flourish. It’s meant to be taken literally.
The Beinoni struggles his whole life with his Yetzer because for all but the fewest of the infinitesimal few who pass through this world as Tzaddikim, the status of Beinoni is the only game in town for those seeking to avoid what Rav Avigdor Miller z"l, used to refer to as the tropics of the next world. It’s a lifetime contract without an escape clause, rather than a stepping stone by which the righteous amongst us can elevate themselves to the status of Tzaddik.
So if becoming Tzaddikim is, for all practical purposes, essentially beyond our grasp, to what purpose are we engaged in a tug of war with the darker side of our imperfections?
Rabbi Yisroel Brog tells us that our job is to reach the level of Beinonim, and given that at the root both Beinonim and Rasha’im are cut from the same cloth, leaving this world as a rock solid Beinoni is no small accomplishment.
And therefore, with this conception in mind, the idea that we are not put into this world to become spiritual übermentchen, we can deal with our failures. Just as a basketball player who misses a shot is even more determined to score the next time he gets the ball, the Beinoni who is cognizant of his place in this world brushes himself off after every knockdown and gets back into the ring to continue the fight with Ra (evil) because he understands that his personal struggle, in and of itself, is a great nachas ruach for Hashem.
The bottom line here is that when a person is faced with a challenge it’s not a sign of weakness. Rabbi Brog reminds us that it’s a siman that he is alive and that he’s up to his eyeballs in Avodas Hashem.
