Who are You Anyway?
It’s quite
common for a person to feel that he’s no more than a cog in a wheel or even
worse, an interchangeable part that can be shunted from one task to the next
with neither identity nor relevance, be it economic or one’s standing as an individual. Such a person is oblivious to the essence of who
he is and where he’s going. And we’re
not necessarily talking about assembly line workers here. In the fast pace, computerized, number
crunching society that is ours, even professional people have been sucked into
the great abyss of the unknown as it pertains to the who of who am I(?).
Rabbi Yonoson
Rosenblum suggests that all this indicates that we have lost our conception of
self. We, in effect, live in a virtual missing
persons bureau of the soul in which we don’t know who we are. And if one doesn’t know himself then how can
he even begin to know anything outside himself?
And more
importantly, how can he know Hashem?
The good news is
that while this outlook may be quite common, it’s about as close as one can get
to a 180 from reality because we are reminded by Rabbi Rosenblum that each of
us is born with a unique mission in life to which no one else has been assigned,
and Hashem gives us the necessary ability to bring our unique mission to
fruition. No one but you can bring your strengths, your challenges, and your
perspective on life to
the table for the task at hand.
In the same way
that no two sets of fingerprints are the same or that no two people have the
same DNA coding, Hashem doesn’t delegate the same task to more than one person,
which by definition means that if you don’t dig down deep enough within, deep
enough to hear the niggun of your tachliss in this world, it simply won’t get
done because that certain task that was given over to you was given over to the
contextual you. It’s about you and you only, so if it can’t be done by you it can’t
be done at all.
This concept of
our singular uniqueness means nothing less than if it were theoretically possible
for someone NOT to have something unique to contribute to Hashem’s world, he
simply wouldn’t be here.
To take it even
a step further, Rabbi Rosenblum informs us in the name of Rav Shraga Feivel
Mendlowitz z”l, that a person will be judged on how he handles the unique
commission that was his and his alone in the same way that the Beis Din in
Shomayim will judge the tog taiglach of his very existence as a Jew vis á vis
his mitzvah observance and his hashkafas.
The truth is
that there are actually two separate concepts in play here. One is the G-d given talents that are ours
and the other is the unique task that each of us was given.
The Chovos Halevovos
teaches in the Shaar HaBitachon that if a person finds his heart drawn in a
certain direction, be it music, art, mathematics, carpentry, mechanics or any
other skill that might serve as cover for making a living, then he
should hearken to that voice within and seek his parnossa accordingly. And what’s good for parnossa is certainly no
less appropriate for executing the special charge with which each of us has
been blessed.
As per the
Chovos Halevovos, we have to ferret out our special strengths and inclinations
from our weaknesses and leverage them to successfully fulfill our purpose in
this world. More often than not, those
strengths and inclinations will dictate the direction in which we will go. And
if we dutifully follow them we will eventually leave our imprint on this world
in one form or another, be it in neon or invisible ink.
But Rabbi
Rosenblum tells us that there will be times where a second step will manifest
itself.
You saw
something that needs fixing? Maybe you
have an insight into a way out of the shidduchim crisis. No one else does.
And it doesn’t
matter a whit if you’re exactly one day back from seminary and you grew up in
house without brothers or you’ve never married off any of your children and you
presently have five girls in the parsha with the youngest being thirty.
If you saw
something then maybe it’s your task.
Maybe you’re Hager and no one sees the well but you. And maybe if you saw something, Hashem let you
see it because he’s sending it your way.
And He’s sending
it your way because you’re unique, you have a mission, and you have something
important to do on your sojourn in this world.
