Are You a Thermometer or a Thermostat? | Parshas Chayei Sarah

okay so everyone knows about the wise men of helm yeah yeah okay so yeah they were very foolish but they thought there's no sin in being foolish but they were foolish and they thought they were wise and they used to philosophize so one day two helmets were philosophizing and one says to his friend you know considering how difficult life is I think it would be better for everyone to never have been born and his friend says yeah I am that's true but how many guys do you know who are that lucky one in a thousand how many guys do you know who are never born right okay so the helmets were talking about how difficult life is and that seems to be the general maybe popular conception you know life is tough but that's what we're gonna talk about today is life really all that bad or is life good and what is a good life okay without further ado let's look in our partial hi sorrow partial starts off like this if I you hi sorrow and the life of Sarah was May Hashanah a hundred years vested in Shauna and twenty years with Shiva Shani meant seven years nay hi Sarah these are the years of the life of sorrow know why it breaks it up into a hundred and then into twenty and then into seven Rashi explains that but I want to look at the second ratio on this verse where he asks and answers another question which is why does the verse begin that you hi Sarah these this is the life of sorrow and then it enumerates Shauna Shauna Shauna a unit of or a group of 100 years 20 years in seven years so we know we're counting what unit years right because it said it three times right and then at the end of the whole thing snake hi Sarah these are the years the life of Sutton I know we're counting years I know accounting years so then why did why at the end does it again say these are the years that a life of sada and so Rashi answers that question and says that that extra word because there's no such thing really in hamish as an extra word but that seemingly superfluous word of repeating that these are years is to add something when it was saying the word Shana previously he was talking quantitatively these are years we are counting but when it says that at the very end on the whole life on all the years together and says these are the years of the life asada it's talking not quantitatively but qualitatively write that as Rashi says cool on shoving Latoya they were all equally good or they were all equal in goodness : all of them shoving were equal Latoya in goodness okay fine no problem now I have a question I've read this book before I know this story all of the years of Saudis life were equally good she was born in or costume which was a rough neighborhood it was not a good place you know you had a wicked King Nimrod who was persecuting of a little Avram who was her future husband he killed her father you know that sought his father Hardin was killed by by numerate she had to leave then she goes to Harlan and then she and her husband opened up the first Chabad House and then their McCotter of a lot of people that must have been a real highlight of life right and there was an official Shas over Harlan they made a lot of followers and that was great but then they had to leave her on laughs look on and they didn't even get told where they're gonna go right so then they went to edit Kanaan that must have been kind of an upheaval and then they get to edits Canard up there's a famine you got to go it's a diam and then she goes to meet Simon who's the one who gets kidnapped and held in Paris palace it's that's her that's aura right but then they become rich and then they come back out of mitzrayim to go back to Kanaan and they go back to their work and now they have wealth so there were a lot of upheavals there there was up and there was down her her her lights her brother got kidnapped and but then and then didn't Avram went and chased anyone and he beat the five kings so the four kings and then he and edit I'll talk about 90 years of childlessness and then all of a sudden she's blessed with with the child and not just any old child Yitzhak Aveeno so there are ups and there are downs in the life of Sora and yet you tell me cool on shoving Latoya they were all equal in goodness that's not what I read so there's an expression there are two kinds of people you can be a thermometer or a thermostat what does that mean that's a thermometer person and a thermostat person a thermometer tells you the temperature in the room a thermostat tells the room the temperature there are reactive people that's a thermometer so if you want to know how life is treating him look at his mood because his mood will be determined by whether he's getting what he likes her what he doesn't like so that's a thermometer then you have the opposite someone who's not reactive someone who's proactive someone who's an influencer we call that a thermostat he chooses his state of mind he chooses his mood and then he emanates that outward and makes that the spirit in his environment the point is that thermometer doesn't do anything other than react to what's going on around it yeah that's another thing that's another thing yeah yeah okay regarding regarding the idea of qualitative life the idea that we look at life where we tend to look at life remember I was saying before the general conception that people have is life is hard we tend to look at life and evaluate life based on how it treats us which if you think about it is not a very smart way not a very accurate way to judge the quality of a life first of all first and foremost that's nothing that we can control how cold be they Shamim puts me at assume I'm everything's in the hands of heaven except for our law of heaven that means how life is treating us God is engineering and orchestrating meticulously to the detail every bit of it how we choose to react to those facts meaning our all of heaven which really means do we choose to live in awe only of God or do we live in awe of people places and things that's our choice so how life treats us we have no control how we decide to feel about it and therefore how to act that's completely within our control so the thermometer thermostat difference really is the difference between are you the victim in your story or are you the hero the protagonist in every drama a protagonist goes through ups and downs that's the three-act structure there's conflict in this resolution and just because there's a heavy conflict in a story you don't call that a bad story to the contrary a good story the protagonist almost looks like there's absolutely no way they can well and that's called a good story so how come when it happens in reality we call that a bad life I was once at a Shiva and somebody said oh he had such a bad life and I didn't like that those first of all even if someone really did have a bad life you don't say that at a Shiva but in this case it was so wrong I said why do you say that and the person says well because you know he'll keep listening to things that happened to this person and I said you're talking about stuff that happened to them adversity and challenges why don't you describe how they took it why do you describe their reaction to it this is a very strong courageous person I would say they had a great life no but they suffered so much but that's not what we call a good life I was created the guy mother says I need lightning ray see in fact it says it in the negative which means really by all rights I shouldn't have been created there's no reason I should have been created Allah but rather why was I created Lashon Mosconi to serve my Maker so the truth is I don't even have to exist like the helmets are saying to each other maybe we shouldn't exist but they were saying it for the opposite reason they were saying because we don't like how life treats us so it would be better than ever if you do it you're trying to do me favors don't do me a favor I don't want to exist right but if you flip it and you say hold on a second you think you came down here to have a good life meaning to have a good life they have it served to you know you were sent down here to make a good life to do not to receive you think your holy precious neshama your eternal perfect soul came down to this this imperfect physical world to receive something you were sent here to do something to make a contribution so we say a good life there's no such thing as a good life being the sum total of how the different episodes of your life were pleasing or displeasing to you that's the that's the the misunderstanding so if you come from that misunderstanding then a person can say well you know a lot of trials and tribulations a lot of challenges I had a bad life but if you flip it and you say I was sent here to contribute then not only is there no such thing as having a bad life unless you choose to unless you choose to I remember when we were kids we used to have a bus driver used to drop us off and as we'd get off every day he'd say the same corny joke but as I grew up I look back and I realized he was a philosopher he used to say hey have yourself a great day unless you've got other plans okay so not only is it not that life is going to be bad but we get to choose the life is good so I'll tell you I'm going to tell you a story this story I did not hear directly from the person happened to I heard it from the person that the person had happened to told it to it happened to a closet named Annette Mendel foot to face who suffered we were talking about him recently he related to him that was coming out aha so he suffered a lot if you want to talk about somebody who had who life didn't treat him nicely right okay in the conventional sense so he was in a gulag he was in a work camp and and he was he told this story to a mentor of mine rabbi Liu from London so one day by foot professor at Mendel was sitting in lahbab ik house of what they call the Babbage foundation in in Stamford Hill in London and he's telling rabbi Liu about some of his gulag experiences now in the gulags there were a few types of different people there were some Jews like like Reb Mendel who were basically political prisoners and there were other political prisoners like intellectuals the the Communists were very suspicious of intellectuals in fact there's an old joke these two say why does KGB work in groups of three because you need one who knows how to write and one who knows how to read and a third one to keep his eye on the two intellectuals right they're very suspicious when people know how to think for themselves obviously so there was a professor there in gulag with Reb Mendel and then the rest of them were just regular criminals they were just you know cutthroat criminal so anyways this professor started to observe that young healthy people were dying and they were just dropping like flies and it wasn't because of a famine or you know melting that malnutrition it wasn't because of disease it wasn't because of injury they would just lose the will to get up off the cot in the morning and when they would come back from their day of slave labor they would find that person dead and this would happen regularly so the professor is watching this I don't know what kind of professor he was but some maybe some type of doctor sociology or psychology he was studying what was going on around him and he approached her Mendeley says I noticed these men who are otherwise healthy and I and I see it's interesting because what he said this was in the 60s whether or not Victor Frankel's logotherapy reached the Soviet Union this doctor had read it by the 1960s I don't know but it's interesting because of the parallels he says that the professor's has to read Mendel I see otherwise healthy men who lose the will to live and they die and I believe it's because they have nothing to live for and then there's their system shuts down so he says but you I see the exact opposite not only are you alive but you're you're sort of like the the cheerleader of the gulag you keep everybody you know excited and you know you have a usually fever a certain good spirit about you and your and encouraging others and I want to understand your insight into what's going on so that Mendel says like this he says look these guys that you're observing who are they they're Cossacks right lowest of the low dregs of society and for a Cossack life is three things a horse a rifle and a bottle of vodka that's life that's it there's nothing there's nothing else now when they get sent sent here to the gulag those three things are taken away they lose their horse they lose their rifle they lose their bottle of vodka so if that's life and those things those things are taken away so life was taken away now it's only a matter of time before the body gets the memo from the brain that you're dead already and that's what you're observing now me what's life what's life life is you try to serve your creator the best you can that's life so when they sent me here did they really take anything from me no not really he says in fact you know it's pretty similar to life back at home back at home I worked in an office used to make fake passports Polish passports to get Jews out of Russia and he says I'm working my office I see the Sun is setting it's time to dive in Mincha the afternoon prayer so you stop work and you davon mint on the afternoon prayer over here we're chopping wood and the Sun is going down and I see it's time to stop working government well there's no shirt to go to so you don't go to shul and if you stop swinging the axe they'll come and shoot you in the head so you don't actually stop working but while you're working as the Sun is setting in your mind silently you dive in Mincha right and in fact not only do you do the same thing as back home but in a certain way it's even better because when I'm out there in the tundra and doffing men car by myself silently in my head I think to myself Wow and all the years since Hashem created the world I bet you no one ever stood in this exact spot and said his praises so you see when they sent me here they didn't take anything away from me that's the real difference between what we're calling before thermometer and thermostat that a thermostat is somebody who says I was sent here I was created to serve the ability to serve can never be taken away from me I can always serve under any conditions and therefore I get to choose whether I have a consistently good life because I can always do good and therefore my life will be good and if I'm constantly doing good I can look back and say my life was consistently constantly equally good every moment of it as opposed to the assumption that most of us have the default assumption which is I came here and now I'm gonna see how I'm treated and if people are nice to me then I had a good day and if they're mean to me at a bad day and I'm up and down like a roller coaster and I have no idea when I got out of bed in the morning whether or not I'm gonna have a good day or a bad day the baal shem tov said and the verse chevy c hashem linetti summit right it's a verse in Psalms and tehilim from mm elephant King David says Shafi'i hashem linetti summit i have placed the lord before me at all times so the baal shem tov said chevy see I have placed is from the word we had it in our Oishi that we were learning I'm a cool on shavon Latoya they were all equal for goodness Chevy she is from the word shava equal so the baal shem tov tells us a formula chevy seha violin Aggie summit have placed the Lord before me at all times meaning I'm God conscious I'm constantly God centered is from the word shove they're equal or even keel to teach you that if you have actually placed Hashem before you at all times meaning if your thought is always on service of your maker if you're always thinking what can I do for Hashem if I'm always thinking about how I can serve Him not what I'm getting out of life but how I'm using my life to serve Him right I've placed the Lord before me at all times then shove it your life will be equally good you have a certain stability in life as opposed to what's the opposite of placing Hashem before you at all times of being God conscious at all times was the opposite of being God conscious self-conscious yeah I'm focused on self so what I'm self-conscious then I'm thinking about well are they being nice to me it'll be mean to me am i eating good food my eating your yucky food do I have money do I not have money to have peace of mind it I'll have peace one and then you just life is just this constant assessment of whether and Adam being served on a silver platter right because all about me and consequently it's the opposite of Sheldon it's roller coaster there was a boy back in the old country unleashed at them and he heard about the Hasidim and became fascinated he ran away and he went to a siddik yeshiva when he came back home his old Russia Sheva caught him and he said why didn't you run away he says I ran to the cinema he says the Hasidim can't teach you anything that I couldn't teach you and if you'll tell me one thing that they could teach you that I can't I'll forgive you so he says really he says yes I will so this is okay one thing that I see them taught me that you couldn't teach me says yeah one thing he says okay they taught me to read minds he says well that's a pretty impressive skill so I know I admit I can't teach you to read minds I can't read minds myself and I can't teach it surely but you have to that's an outrageous claim you have to back that claim up you have to prove it read my mind boy says if I read your mind you're gonna forgive me for running the way to the sitting says yeah but do it you got it you got to really do it the voice is fine you got to concentrate if you're focused on the thought I'll be able to tell you what it is so the former Russia Shiva the former teacher says ok fine no problem I'm focused voices you really focus this is yeah I'm focused he says ok you're thinking Chevy seha violin egg be summit I have placed the Lord before me at all times I'm constantly God conscious the teacher says I'm not thinking that at all the boy says I know that's why I ran away to the city anyways to sum it all up we can go through life self conscious assessments constantly being made on how am I being treated how is life treating me and we're reactive and were the victim of our story and were a thermometer up and down all at the whim of our surroundings or we can go through life saying I was created for one purpose I was created to surf I was created to contribute to do something to give and no one can strip me of my ability to give no matter what situation I'm living under like read Mendel's story and therefore my life is consistently good and this is the answer to the question a shallow reading of the story of Saudis life would be that she had a rollercoaster ride of her life she had painful moments she had pleasurable moments she had emotional lows emotional highs and that would all be true if sorrow where a self-centered person god forbid but if you understand that sorrow may know our holy Matri our lived life proactively not to be served but to be a servant a servant of a chef and that every single moment of life whether it was an easy moment or a difficult moment or a really really really really challenging moment she saw every moment as an opportunity to give to be a service now it's no wonder that we can say coolin shoving Latifah they were all equal for goodness they were all equal free goodness or if you want to take this whole talk and sum it up and what in a one-liner the absortion cool on shoving Latoya gamsu Latoya that was his whole fort what does that mean how do you make sure that your life is all consistently good do you say everything is for the good what does it mean that everything everything is for the good that's what we've been talking about the past 25 minutes that if you look at life how it's treating you how can you say this for the good this was a terrible painful moment I would never have wanted wanted this to happen and now it's happening but if you look at life as opportunities of service then every single thing that will ever happen to you is good because it's just another opportunity for service and you put together a moment in moment and moment in moment of service and you look back and you have a life that was all perfectly equally good like I'm a tree Xsara okay that's the lesson this week