The worth of a human being does not concern itself
with dollars and cents. It is rather a
study in labor, as opposed to capital and it is balanced on the scales of good
and evil.
As Rabbi Yitzchak Berkovits reminds us, whether a person is good or bad is not
derivative of Creation.
Much like the computer, we come to this world with
loads of stuff pre-installed. Shomayim
tends to be very systems oriented, and as such we’ve been hard wired with a
circulatory system, digestive system, nerve system, skeletal system, lymph
system et al. along with sundry organs, sinews, and a mass of brain cells that
defy description.
And yet, the sum total of a human being is not
dependent on what Hashem crammed in under the hood.
In EmunahSpeak:
A Unique Mission, we said:
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.
That’s
our unique mission and, in essence, it’s external. But that’s only half the story because Hashem
also created a mentch in the state the He thought was perfect for him to fulfill
an internal mission in life which is common to all, and that is to overcome his
character flaws in addition to developing the capabilities that we spoke about in
EmunahSpeak:
A Unique Mission.
And
whether or not we fulfill that is all that matters.
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.
When
the dust settles after our one hundred twenty year boxing match in this world, what’s
important in relation to evaluating the worth of a human being is how much heavy
lifting you have done vis á vis your character traits,
the punches you took, and whether or not you were still standing when the final
bell sounded.
