What does being happy and being not happy have in
common?
It’s all about focus, and Reb Gutman Locks clues us
in as to where we should be fixing our gaze.
He tells us that we all have
pretty much the same needs. We need
health and a way to make a living. We
want to have someone to love as well as kids and friends. We also need some level of spiritual understanding;
the higher the better.
But
most often, he reminds us, most of us are missing at least one of these. It seems to just be the way things are. Not everyone is blessed to be married. Not everyone merits having children. Not everyone is blessed to live comfortably
in their own home. And not so many of us
live life with the spiritual awareness that we should have.
So
if we are missing something so important, how can we be happy?
In
EmunahSpeak:
Samayach B’Chelko, we quoted Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg that the essential
ingredient of our happiness is not what happens to us but rather what happens
within us. It’s
how we deal internally with life’s externalities that will define the
parameters of our joyousness.
It’s
all about whom and what we are, and we write our own ticket. And if we
write it in indelible ink, then our sense of joy will be such that even when we
suffer pain in any of its manifestations, be it physical, emotional, spiritual,
financial, etc., we will not lose sight of the essential goodness of our lives.
One
who is samayach b’chelko may well be dissatisfied with the pain in his life, but he doesn’t
allow that pain to take over and become the center of his life. The pain can be pain, but it doesn’t
take away from the joyousness inherent in a life in which everyday blessings are
counted like pearls.
Or as Reb Gutman Locks puts it, it’s
the story of the haves and the have nots.
He lets us hear that to be happy; all we have to do is to focus
on that we do have. That’s it.
And
to be unhappy; all we have to do is to focus on the good things that we don’t have.
When
we focus on the good things that we do
not have, we forget all about the good
things that we do have. And when we focus on the good things that we do have, we forget about the good
things that we do not have.
It’s nothing more complicated than
that.
Are you a have or a have not?
