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<a style="font-family:Trebuchet MS, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:18px;" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Aspaqlaria/~3/514116079/the-pursuit-of-happiness.shtml">The Pursuit of Happiness</a>
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<span>Posted:</span> 16 Jan 2009 10:09 AM CST</p>
<div style="margin:0;font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;line-height:140%;font-size:12px;color:#000000;"><p>Rabbi Noah Weinberger of Aish haTorah, in <a href="http://www.aish.com/spirituality/48ways/" target="_blank">the summary of his 48 Ways to Wisdom</a> (an elaboration of the 48 steps to acquiring Torah listed in Avos <img src='http://www.aishdas.org/asp/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> on <a href="http://www.aish.com" target="_blank">aish.com</a>, writes:</p>
<blockquote><p>Did you ever begin a stimulating physical activity and then discover you somehow can’t extricate yourself? You pick up a bag of potato chips, and start eating two, three, four, five. Before you know it you’re at the bottom of the bag. You didn’t really want any more, but you couldn’t stop. You passed the point of diminishing returns and now you feel sick.</p>
<p>While physical pleasure is an essential part of enjoying life, at the same time, we have to know how to control it and harness it. Way #18 is <em>b’miut ta’anug</em> - “minimize physical pleasure.” You cannot just eat chocolate bars the whole day long. That is not living.</p>
<p>Human beings are pleasure-seekers. The more pleasure, the more power. Figure out how to transform raw physical sensation into the deeper pleasures of love, meaning, creativity. Don’t worry - you won’t lose the physical pleasure. You’ll actually enhance and appreciate it more.</p></blockquote>
<p>And:</p>
<blockquote><p>Human beings are pleasure-seekers. Most people seek pleasure in careers, vacations, cars and homes. In our generation, many people grumble about obligations as unpleasant aggravations. Perhaps that’s why many today wait so long to get married. Imagine being tied down with responsibilities and children to support!</p>
<p>This is a shallow view. It may be difficult to fulfill obligations, but there’s tremendous pleasure in getting done what has to get done. You’re actualizing your potential. That’s real meaning, real pleasure. It’s energizing.</p>
<p>Way #33 is <em>Ohev et ha’tzedakot</em> — literally “love righteousness.” Once you realize the pleasure of fulfilling obligations, it’s much easier to carry them out. And if you have to do them anyway, you might as well take pleasure!</p></blockquote>
<p>I find I can not agree with the concept that “human beings are pleasure-seekers”. Not so much that it’s wrong as that I think that if we think about what gives us pleasure and makes us happy, the statement loses content.</p>
<p>This ties directly into my previous post “<a href="http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2009/01/who-is-wealthy.shtml">Who is wealthy</a>?” One’s lot in life is a process, not a particular static state. The wealthy person is one who accepts their process, their curriculum, their mission in Hashem’s plan for the universe — to give three very different sounding descriptions of the same thing.</p>
<p>Similarly, happiness is in the process. As creative beings, we <span style="text-decoration: underline;">want</span> to constantly be heading toward something new. Valuing pleasure is fleeting, the goal is aquired and life goes on. “He who has a <em>maneh</em> [a coin worth 100 <em>zuz</em>] wants 200 [<em>zuz</em>].” The amount necessary to acheive <em>ta’anug</em>, contentment, moves ever upward because we need the pursuit in order to be happy.</p>
<p>It’s not that people seek pleasure, it’s that pleasure is the emotion associated with searching. We are depressed when things didn’t go as we wished. We are worried when we reason to believe they may not. We assign pleasure with the goal of pursuit, and <strong>happiness is the feeling that our pursuit is succeeding.</strong></p>
<p><em>B</em><em>itachon</em> is trust that our life’s process and the events and changes in it are part of Hashem’s plan. And thus the key to happiness is aligning our pursuit with that process as He guides it to play out. <strong>For someone with <em>bitachon, </em>happiness is inevitable.</strong></p><div class="feedflare">
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<a style="font-family:Trebuchet MS, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:18px;" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Aspaqlaria/~3/513435271/who-is-wealthy.shtml">Who is wealthy?</a>
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<span>Posted:</span> 15 Jan 2009 05:27 PM CST</p>
<div style="margin:0;font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;line-height:140%;font-size:12px;color:#000000;"><blockquote><p>Ben Zoma would say: … Who is rich? He who is satisfied with his lot. As it is said: ‘When you eat from the toil of your hands, you are fortunate and it is good for you’ (Psalms 128:2). ‘You are fortunate’ — in this world; ‘and it is good for you’ — in the World to Come.</p>
<p align="center"><em> - Avos 4:1</em></p>
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<p>When speaking publicly, I often use this story from the Kotzker Rebbe, a Chassidic master known for his sharp wit.</p>
<p>The Kotzker Rebbe once asked his students: There are two people on a ladder, one on the fourth rung, and another on the 10th, which one is higher?</p>
<p>The book where I saw this thought doesn’t record his students’ answers. I assume some recognized it as a trick question, and answered that it was the one on the fourth, some answered the 10th figuring the rebbe was leading them somewhere, and others were silent. But the rebbe’s answer was succinct, “It depends who is climbing the ladder, and who is going down.”</p>
<p>What is relevant isn’t our state at any point in time, it’s how we’re changing.</p>
<p>Given that idea, I think ben Zoma’s notion of my lot in life is the path Hashem placed before me to travel. Not where I stand now physically, socially, psychologically or spiritually. Not even where G-d is leading me. My lot is the trip along the way. The whole roller coaster ride, the peaks and the dips.</p>
<p>My lot isn’t what I have at any particular point in time. Not in the physical sense, although someone who makes $25,000 a year and is content is certainly wealthier than the millionare who is consumed with craving his next million. My lot, in ben Zoma’s sense, isn’t even my current spiritual state. It’s the road I’m to travel.</p>
<p>I think this understanding is reinforced by his choice of proof-text and its image of eating by the work of one’s hands. “‘Fortunate’ in this world”, along the way, “and ‘it is good for you’ in the world to come” in terms of what you accomplish. The verse’s language can be taken as one of process, working toward a goal.</p>
<blockquote><p>Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t.</p>
<p style="text-align: right;"><em>- Richard Bach</em></p>
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<p>The Alter of Kelm (R’ Simcha Zisl Ziv 1824-1898, Lithuania) says something similar in <em>Chomkhmah uMussar</em>, but nothing I could figure out how to reduce to a “sound bite”. Self perfection is the work of a life-time, but that’s exactly why we were given a lifetime.</p>
<p>The whole being-vs-becoming distinction is central to existentialism. Kierkegaard’s central problem was that of <strong>becoming</strong> a Christian, in explicit contrast to <strong>being </strong>one.</p>
<p>Sartre’s “Existence precedes the essence” is about the fact that the essence of a person is the process his existence follows. And thus a person exists before his essence does. In contrast to a building, where the essence inhabits the architect’s mind and blueprints before it exists. You could know everything there is to know about a table just by knowing how it will be built and what it’s from. Essence precedes existence. Not so for people.</p>
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<p style="text-align: left;">[M]an first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world — and defines himself afterwards.</p>
<p style="text-align: right;"><em>- Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism</em></p>
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<p>Here’s a related thought from R’ Samson Raphael Hirsch’s (1808-1888, Germany) commentary on themes from Mishlei:</p>
<blockquote><p>Man can aspire to spiritual-moral greatness which is seldom fully achieved and easily lost again. Fulfillment lies not in a final goal, but in an eternal striving for perfection.</p></blockquote>
<p>The Alter of Novhardok (R’ Yosef-Yoizl Horowitz 1849-1919) studied under the aforementioned Alter of Kelm. (Alter is a title meaning “elder”; the intent of their students in using this title was to connote a grandfather-grandson relationship.) Here’s a related quote, also from my signature generator, from his <em>Madreigas ha’Adam</em>, but written in the reverse:</p>
<blockquote><p>Man wants to achieve greatness overnight, and he wants to sleep well that night too.</p></blockquote>
<p>Last, a thought from the Mussar Movement’s founder, R’ Yisrael Salanter (Lipkin 1810-1883, Lithuania), along the same lines as R’ Hirsch (above):</p>
<blockquote><p>One doesn’t learn mussar to be a tzaddik, but to become a tzaddik.</p></blockquote>
<p>The knowledge that this process is what constitutes my curriculum, something tailored specifically for the needs of my soul is quite comforting. The notion that there is something that Hashem’s plan for the universe needed me to do — and only I can do it.</p>
<p>When I start to feel like I’ve been treading water too long and my arms are getting tired and I’m scared that my head will soon go under, I try to return to the mental image that epiphany gave me. (And I hope I relayed, as it’s hard to convey an epiphany, as I can’t share that “Aha!” feeling, just paint the ideas.) It doesn’t always work, but overall the idea helps keep me sane.</p>
<p>My lot in life is the ladder that I alone can climb. This is climbing the ladder, the process of becoming, Rav Hirsch’s “eternal striving”, the work of a lifetime, not a single night (with a good night’s sleep fitted into it, to boot!). It is the job for which G-d created me as I am, when I live and where I live, with the people I know, the responsibilities I face, and the challenges He throws at me, solely because this is something His great plan required that required his having a Micha Berger to do it.</p><div class="feedflare">
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