Here’s a teenager
that’s at the wrong end of doing everything right.
He would rather
look at girls than at the Gemara and that’s probably the good news as far as
his eyes go these days. His mitzvah
observance wouldn’t intimidate a Reform Jew, and Shabbos is just another day of
indulgence.
Unsurprisingly,
he is of the opinion that Hashem doesn’t love him so his situation goes from
bad to worse with the bottom close enough for reading glasses.
He’s our son,
brother, nephew, cousin, uncle, grandson, friend, or neighbor and we love
him.
We can dust him
off and put him on his feet, but how do we motivate him to walk in the right
direction? Fair question this, and
Jonathan Rietti answers in the name of Rebbe Nachman that we start with the
smallest good.
Smallest good?
In the most
messed up life there is something positive.
It may be a next to nothing that barely registers in Shomayim, but as
long as it is above the line as opposed to below, we zero in on that minimum
and build up from there.
You were out all
night on the beach in Coney Island with your
friends and ended up at an 11:30 minyan the next day at Landau’s, four hours
after your minyan at the yeshiva?
Not great form
to be sure, and at the appropriate time (hopefully soon) you’ll change your
nocturnal activities for the better but right now look for the good and you
don’t have to look far.
You davened with
a minyan at which you presumably put on tefillin, and we can extrapolate from
there that you more likely than not ate a kosher breakfast which maybe in your
case was lunch.
Is this not
enough of a reason for Hashem to love you?
He would even
settle for less.
When we say
Modeh Ani in the morning we are supposed to be grateful for another lap around
the track. And of course we’re grateful
because when we went to sleep last night there was no guarantee that we would
wake up, and Jonathan Rietti lets us hear that the fact that we did wake up
shows that Hashem hasn’t given up on us.
And if Hashem hasn’t given up on us there’s still hope that there is
something we can do to justify our existence.
And he then asks:
Is this not
the greatest kal v’chomer in history?
If Hashem hasn’t
given up hope on you how much more so should you not give up hope on yourself?
Life, however,
is not one big self-esteem junket. It’s
a minefield.
So if someone
(most probably yourself) tells you that you’re not good for anything, Jonathan
Rietti tells us that you can say (or remind yourself):
Hey! Wait a second! Do you know who woke me up this morning?
I count in His
eyes.
