Vayera: Prove Yourself
Sticking to a commitment eventually becomes who you are. Get married, do what married people do, stick around long enough, and become a parent. Choose a career and do the necessary work, don’t quit, and find success. Although success is relative to what you envision it to be, so make sure to know its proper definition.
Maybe we’ll straighten out success’s definition for a paragraph or two before we continue. In school we may see the kid who finished his test first and we’d envy their success. As we grew we’d see people with money and wish we were like them one day. Our eyes see the athlete and mark them successful based on their performance. All of these stories we used to define success are childish and incorrect. The first reason for this is because success doesn’t depend on a result. The second reason is that it tells us that we cannot be successful unless we gain the attention they’ve received. And I wouldn’t want you to go through your entire life feeling unsuccessful. Nope.
Success is a term that comes along with a great feeling. It is achieved when we accomplish what we set ourselves out to do. Now, here’s the tricky part. We don’t set ourselves out for the results; we do things to do them. If you wake up in the morning and you figure that the only way for it to be successful is if you bring home some dough, you are toast. Wake up and say, “My success depends on me doing what I said I will do.” Ok, now that you’ve mastered success, let’s continue on with our opening statement.
A young boy decides to get married. What he fails to recognize is that this commitment alone will describe every second of his future. It is not about getting to a goal; the goal is putting the ring on the finger. From then it is all post-goal reality. I remember landing this thought a day after my Bar Mitzvah. I remember hearing myself say, “I can’t wait for my Bar Mitzvah!” I clearly recall looking at the calendar two years earlier to find that future date posted. I can rewalk the many moments during the planning stage, and I sharply see the thoughts and daydreams that fluttered behind my eyelids back then. But the day after it sank deep: “Now what?”
Now I live as this person, in this reality. I can’t fight age; this is the fact of my life. Many in the secular world have trouble leaving childhood behind, and end up doing many wrongs in adulthood since they didn’t factually grow up at thirteen. Marriage is the same thing. Once it is the fact of your reality, now you live as this person.
“But how do I live as a married person?” one may ask. Simple! Stick to the commitment. “But how can I remember this every day, throughout my many distractions?” Simple! The bed you sleep in will remind you. “But…?” Simple! Do it and your questions will all be answered!
Bar Mitzvah was the metaphor for marriage, and marriage is our metaphor to the truest commitment of all. We’re only just scratching the surface of where we’re headed.
At the Bar Mitzvah we have no choice. Turn thirteen, boom, free entry to the hallway. Marriage on the other hand is up to you. “You’re in the hallway, which door will you choose to open?” If you’d ask any person with an ounce of self-worth they’d tell you that their marriage will be or is their choice. But when it truly comes down to making the choice, it is our reality of cause and effect that seems to lead us into certain doors rather than others. Bar Mitzvah teaches us to accept the facts for what they are, so when we are married we continue living with that motto. Marriage teaches us that even our clearest choices are also scripted. So do we have a choice? We do, but our choice will determine the world we live in and what that world has to offer. The choice can be under the Chuppah, or it can begin at the ripe age of thirteen and a day.
Once you have chosen your desired path and you walk it, you will acquaint yourself with certain people walking alongside you. For instance, Yeshiva. You go there and you meet others who are there as well. You choose your environment and then learn to live within it. But what if a kid comes over and steals from your precious time? Will you remember your reason for choosing this path? You see, your original road has now led you to a fork in the road, and your next choice will lead you to the next fork which may have more than just two paths to choose from.
So you have a choice. Choose wisely. And remember where you came from and why you made this decision. Set reminders, fill your schedule, have internal and external accountabilities, envision your vision each day, and of course, pray for the future and be grateful for how far you’ve come.
As mentioned, your choices will create the environment you will be living in. To be able to live it you will require a little thing called belief. You have to believe that this original choice was the good one to take. We cannot think and overthink our actions, and should not; we must stick to the belief that we did the right thing and were led in the right path. Naturally, if we went down a path of hatred and revenge we must come to admit that to ourselves quickly before the next fork in the road has us going into it too deep. But the good news is that all it takes to leave a path is to say, “I’m sorry,” and to mean it. Try it with a human, and you’ll know that it works with Hashem as well.
We also need belief in order to continue our path to reach a desired reality. That desired reality cannot be something concrete, otherwise it’ll be the Bar Mitzvah all over again: “Now what?” Your desired outcome has to be “Clearly Unattainable!” Know what milestones you desire to reach, but don’t ever think that you’re done climbing.
To stay ambitious in this belief you will need to set reminders, fill your schedule, etc., and pray, but the Gemara in Brachos 5a makes it clear that there is another important aspect involved. לעולם ירגיז אדם יצר הטוב על יצר הרע, “Man should enrage his productive forces to choose good over doing bad.” There are heavenly forces who go by these names and we must pick a side, and give the Yetzer Tov the bad Middah of rage in order to conquer the Yetzer Hara. This is war. Ambition is a wonderful trait to master, and how lucky is one who has reached that discipline!
So now that we understand belief properly, let’s move back to Choice. No matter when your environment started forming by your conscious choices, you have to acknowledge the terrain you are in right now. Which means that your belief tells you that the past was exactly what it was and that we cannot look back with hopes of changing that moment. That moment will forever be what it was. What you can do is to change your ways today. You can decide today that it is the first day of your future, and either start a new path or continue down the old path with a new perspective; it is up to you. Either way, the past will haunt you until you say “I’m sorry,” and mean it.
Our old choices may have been wrong. And because of them we are forced to change due to our crumbling reality. But in the end, the more we work on our good path, the more people we will meet on a day-to-day basis, the more our experience grows, and the better our experience becomes. Wonderful. So we’ve covered belief.
Nah, we just began. Go back to school in your mind and see the principal standing before you. He’s the person who will scold and compliment you, but he’s also the one to whom you can go when you need something. In other words, “You believe that he can help you.” But what happens if he doesn’t help? And what will be if he makes your problem worse? And what kind of life would you have if he created the problem in the first place?
You see, since we’ve placed our belief in man and they didn’t come through for us, we can no longer trust them. Meaning, we can no longer trust the belief we have in them. Many people hold on to grudges on these Rabbis and counselors for years and blame their inaction or destruction on them, when all they truly have to do is “grow up.” Tell yourself, “I believed in them because I was young and couldn’t help myself through issues at that point in life.” And poof! The entire anger on them is gone. All that is left for you to do right now is say I’m sorry to yourself for not doing this earlier.
Unlike the principal is the parent. With a person who is part of you for a short amount of years, like in school, you can poof that entire belief in a second. But parents who are your lovers and protectors from birth until death do us part, what if they started a problem or didn’t come through for you? Can you simply poof them out of existence by saying, “They are no longer needed in my life, just like I did with the principal”?
Anyone who has had parental issues and tried running from them eventually couldn’t deal with the internal pain and either died miserably or looked for the path of forgiveness. They came to learn that their parents are human beings and besides for not knowing your thoughts, they also couldn’t do everything all the time. The belief they tried poofing when they ran away is now, finally, able to remain in their heart. All the kid has to do is change the trust level that they depend on them for. They say, “I believe that parents will always love me, even beyond death, and the greatest thing I can do for us to stay connected is to make them love me even more.” “No longer will I need them to do anything for me besides for love, and I will make sure that they have every reason to do just that.” Poof to the resentment. Gone.
Now let’s go even deeper. There is a relationship that contains a belief that you cannot quit the trust in it. Unlike the parents that you can remove the trust factor from and still keep the belief, with this one you are intimately attached. Nothing in the world that you can say can poof the resentment you have toward them for not showing up for you, besides by acknowledging and saying “They actually did!”
If you look back at your own past, can you confidently say that you believe in yourself? Have you come through for yourself? Have you remained committed to your beliefs? Can you trust yourself? It is a hard feat to pull off and say that the past is exactly how it should have been, but that is part of the simple belief you mastered earlier, so no biggie. But if you do not come through for yourself from now on, that’s a different story. If you don’t you’ll be reaffirming your resentment toward yourself, so you’d better get your act together and start the show, and then you’ll actually come through for yourself with tangible and factual recorded time.
Many struggle to get over their addictions and sadness. Each time they fall again and cannot overcome their urges, an entire lifetime of sadness washes over them. The so many times that they’ve promised themselves not to do it again or fall for the noise, and the so many years that this problem has persisted, they all flood over them to drown them. It is so sad. And for this prayer helps tremendously. Just read the words that you are saying, understand them, and know before Whom you are standing and that He listens.
We have lost trust in ourselves so many times. We’ve tried running away from ourselves, but wherever we went, we were there. We gave up completely and said, “The pit with all of this resentment, this is who I am. Beat it!” Our hearts cried silent for years. Our Yom Kippurs felt like rebellion. Our relationships felt fake as a simulation. We stopped believing in ourselves because we felt too weak to overcome our inner habits and pleasurable instincts.
But if you really want to come through for yourself you have to redefine the trust factor you have in yourself. Say, “I don’t have to be perfect, I just have to prove myself to myself every day. It doesn’t matter if I fail a thousand times today, I will have proved myself to be trustworthy once, and that is good enough for me!”
There is nowhere you can run from yourself. You must believe in yourself; it is your duty in life. Prove to yourself that you can trust yourself. Choose to do something that is actually good for you, and do it every day. And never forget to celebrate yourself. Accept the compliments as encouragement, and stay ambitious. Mile marker after mile marker.
Days will come when you lose your ambition and you will feel as though you fell back to a state before your beginning. Don’t worry, you didn’t. You know how I know, because in order for that to happen you would have to turn back time, and since you can’t do that, you are by force living in today’s day, and that means, “Opportunities for new beginnings happen anew before each beginning.” So don’t wait to get back up. Don’t risk having your mind tell you “You can’t believe in yourself because you have been riddled with this problem for another year of your life!”
And of course, set reminders to wake you up. Just like your bed will remind you, each night, that you are married, set clear and evident reminders that sober you up, daily! Not just, “When I look at my doorknob I’ll remember to breathe, and when I sit in my car I’ll remember to be grateful…” Concrete and solid wake-up calls that scream to you, “You are doing this because you are a good person!” Accountable friends like Chavrusos. Davening with a Minyan three times a day. Waking up early. Adhering to perfected speech and language use. You will constantly be reminded, internally and externally, of your greater purpose. And you will start proving yourself trustworthy as you reach milestone after milestone.
Hashem! The minimum belief we should have in Hashem is with the belief we believe in ourselves. And if your belief in yourself grows, your belief in Him should grow along. But this is the minimum. Otherwise we end up looking like the one who trusts his own horse and chariot (Tehillim 20:8). Tehillim 139 gives us a very clear image of what our belief in Hashem should look like, and it is a must for all who genuinely seek his connection to learn, repeat, and have such words constantly flowing on their lips. “He knows my words before I’ve spoken them.” “No matter where I run to, He is there.” “I hate those who hate You.”
The only reason one might say that Hashem hasn’t come through for them is if they, themselves, have yet to come through for themselves. The only true way to believe is when we are tested, pass, and see the reward on the other end. But as we spoke above, reward doesn’t equal attention; the reward of belief is that I can make myself love myself even more. How? By doing things that will make me happy and proud.
Translate this to the belief we have in Hashem. We don’t ask for reward; we accept that this life that He leads us in is the greatest reward possible, for through it I can love me even more. I trust Him completely because I am convinced with all my heart that He has and always will come through for me. Unlike my personal life, I don’t just have my life to prove my belief in Him; I have the millions of Yidden of times passed, along with the millions living today, that He is true to His word.
It is not a game that I play when I read the words in the Torah and accept them as fact. I see this system conducting all of time, space, infinity, and beyond (beyond infinity, haha, Tehillim 126:2, Brachos 31a). The belief in Him is “Poof Proof.” We see Hashem saying in the Torah, Devarim 34:4, “this is the land that I swore to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, to your children I will give her.” We see in Bamidbar 23:19, “Lord is not man who is deceitful, or son of a human who changes His mind, who says and doesn’t do, and who speaks and doesn’t keep!”
When these words are read they are meant to instill this belief into our hearts and bring us comfort. We cannot deny the inevitable future, since He has written it in His book and it has been learned, studied, reviewed, sung, laughed and cried, lived and died with ever since.
If you are looking for a pick-me-up anytime, just allow the words of Hashem’s holy Torah to seep into your heart and mind, and it will revive your soul’s belief. And to keep it burning, be like Avraham Avinu, prove yourself. And you will be like him as you live the reward.
Son, go now (Shir Hashirim 2:10). This thought has been birthed in you. Watch it grow.
Good Shabbos
Duvi Lemmer
LemmerHypnotherapy.com