There are number
of ways to look at Yissurim. In EmunahSpeak:
Seeing the Good, we addressed
the subject on two levels.
On a very basic
level we spoke about how Hashem only wants the best for us and how we should
view life’s curve balls as the real Plan A rather the ruination of what we thought was Plan A.
We went on to
point out that for most of us it is the madreiga of grinning and bearing it,
which means that if we’ve got our heads screwed on right, really tight, we
won’t have a meltdown when a pipe bursts in our house putting most of what we
own three feet under water. We’re not happy about it, to be sure, and as
much as we may try, we also seem to be incapable of discerning the good that
will eventually put in an appearance. And nonetheless, we’ll say gam zu
l’tova, accepting b’lev shaleim that it’s all Hashem’s will.
If you think
that this is no big deal of a madreiga, see how close you get to it the next
time Hashem doesn’t sign off on your plans. Nonetheless, this response is
passive, and we’re locked in on defense with no pushback on our part.
On a much higher
level, high enough to be but theoretical for all but a few, Rabbi Yisroel Brog
shared with us an amazing insight. He told us, in the name of the Tanya,
that the yissurim that we endure in the course of our sojourn in this physical
world come from a world that is totally tov, and we are incapable of seeing the
tov in much the same way that we are incapable of seeing ethereal beings such
as angels.
And because
these yissurim do in fact come from a world that is totally good, they have to
come to us as such because this world cannot handle anything emanating from
that world that’s not dressed up in a levush of yissurim.
Those who are
samayach with their yissurim disregard the package (the yissurim) and look
inside (the tov). They are samayach because they realize that they are
zoche to a good that is so special that it has to be packaged in yissurim.
In the first
case we endure, while in the second a very chosen few are able to see past their yissurim to the good lurking
within..
So what about
the rest of us who, in a spiritual sense, are very much subject to the law of
gravity? How do we leverage our yissurim
as opposed to passively grinning and bearing it?
Being makir tov
is a pretty good start.
You broke your
leg, and now you are hopping around on crutches? Whatever Hashem’s reason, one thing is
certain: He had one. And the fact that He had one precludes any
idea of mistake or accident. So, while
you were uncomfortably leaning on your crutches during Shemona Esray, did you
remember in Modim to thank Hashem that your leg wasn’t amputated because of
diabetes or that you didn’t crack your skull instead?
According to the
view of the Chovos Halavovos, no matter how good we are and regardless of how
many mitzvos we do or how much Torah we learn we can’t begin to pay Hashem
back for the fact that he brought us into this world and sustains us. And to accentuate the point he notes that
before we draw our first breath we are already nine months behind in the
cheshbon.
Simply put, Hashem
owes us nothing and we owe Him everything.
Whatever we get is a gift with one hundred and twenty years of perfect
health being a bigger gift than two painful years on a respirator. This being true, it therefore logically
follows that those two painful years on a respirator are a bigger gift than
four even more painful years on a respirator.
And so it goes.
Whatever
yissurim come our way are ironically by way of Hashem’s Middas HaRachamim, not
Middas HaDin, and they are better than we deserve because we have no claim in
strict Din whatsoever for anything.
You got
hired? Boruch Hashem! You got fired? Boruch Hashem!
Each event was
brought about for a different reason to be sure, but they are both Boruch
Hashem nonetheless because in the same way that we are supposed to bless Hashem
for the bad as well as the good we should thank him also, and we do so
by leveraging our yissurim as a vehicle for something positive to say in Modim.
Yissurim are
also a revelation, in that their ebb and flow make us keenly aware of the
miracles inherent in our bodies. They
are an advance seminar in the Sha’ar HaBechina of the Chovos Halavovos and as
such, our relationship to them should be viewed as one of rebbe and talmid in
which we imbibe a shmeck of the profundity of our physical existence.
Rav Miller z”l,
taught us that by bringing attention, for instance, to a part of the body that
we have temporarily forgotten that we possess, yissurim draw the attention of
the thinking person to the seamless perfection of Hashem’s handiwork as
manifested in us.
Hashem has to
arrange for something to go wrong (in the form of yissurim) for us to come to a
clear understanding of the “miracle” of everything going right.
