Do You Still Play On Playgrounds ?

This Torah class is brought to [music] you by tora anytime.com. A Torah Anytime original series [music] Imagine [music] this for a second. You're driving by a playground and you see a 50-year-old man, not homeless, not drunk, a normal guy, a businessman, someone respected in the community, and he's alone running up the slides, climbing the jungle gym, balancing across the beams over and over again. There's [music] no kids with him. He's not with his nieces and nephews. It's just him. You wouldn't say, "Wow, look at that free spirit." You wouldn't say, "Good [music] for him staying young." You'd say, "This guy has absolutely lost his [music] mind." You'd say, "Maybe he, you know, loved this when he was five, but he's not five anymore." You'd think, "This is childish. This is embarrassing. This is pathetic." [music] And you'd be right. Because adulthood means you're supposed to outgrow certain toys. You're supposed to move on from childish pursuits. But here's the uncomfortable question. Don't a [music] lot of adults do the exact same thing. We just swap the playground equipment for shinier [music] toys and instead of slides and swings, it's gadgets and cars [music] and status and likes and titles and restaurants and square footage and who's talking about me and who's not. Full grown [music] adults running up and down different plastic structures calling [music] it success. And nobody thinks it's crazy. Why? Because society voted that these toys are [music] adult. That's it. That's the entire logic. Not because they're meaningful, not because [music] they last, not because they elevate the soul in any way, just because enough people in society agreed to obsess over them. [music] But that's a ridiculous way to decide what a human being should live for. [music] Judaism never outsourced that decision to society. In Judaism, adulthood [music] isn't about better toys. It's about higher ambitions. A child plays because [music] play is all he can handle. An adult is supposed to build something eternal like Tyra and mitzvah and character and self-discipline [music] and purpose, a relationship with Hashem. Not because money is evil, [music] not because success is inherently bad, but because if that's the main event, then spiritually [music] we never left the playground. We just updated the equipment. Kazal didn't [music] measure greatness by net worth. They measured it by how much Tyra lives inside of you, how refined your midas are, how much light you bring into other people's lives, how much of you survive after you're gone. The guttle isn't the one with the biggest toys. The gule is the one who stopped playing games. That's how we measure greatness. So the next time you pass a [music] playground and you think that would be ridiculous for an adult, ask yourself something [music] a little harder. What am I still running after that makes sense only because everyone [music] else is doing it, too? Because adulthood in Judaism isn't about being respectable. It's about being responsible for eternity. [music] It's about knowing that some toys, no matter how expensive, no matter how socially approved, at the end of the day, are still toys. You've just experienced [music] another Torah class brought to you by to anytime.com.