I Spoke At A Seminary And Challenged Them About Self Love

[music] >> So, it's a pleasure to be here. My name is Hillel Eisenberg. I live not too far from here. And I like to thank Mr. Blumenthal. We we tried making this happen a long time ago. I don't know what happened. Life happens. And here we are. And it's a zchus to share some words of chizuk with you. This doesn't have to be a speech. It could be interactive. It could be a speech. Sort of up to you. Um I don't bark. Um but I'd like to begin with the following. The time that we are in right now is a time of introspection. And I'd like to ask a question. And that is do you love yourself? I know you're thinking Wait a minute. Of course I love myself. Who doesn't love themselves? But are you sure it's so simple? Is it so black and white? We are currently living in the most self-curated, self-loved, self-absorbed, and self-obsessed generation in all of human history. You walk into a bookstore and the largest section is the self-help section. You have hashtags on Instagram, #glowup, #loveyourself, #lookatyourself, #youonlyliveonce. Billions of views. You have influencers where their entire career is morning routines and ice baths and loving yourself. We are living in a time where the beauty industry is worth hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. More people today are getting plastic surgery than ever in all of human history. We are obsessed with ourselves. So, you would think that in such a society where we are so into caring for ourself that we would all be running around so loved. We would feel so cared for and emotionally stable, right? Well, the statistics do not seem to bear that out. Suicide rates in the United States have risen by roughly 37% since the year 2000. Bizarre. I thought we love ourselves. About one in four Americans are diagnosed with depression. Antidepressants are among the most commonly prescribed medications in the country. Roughly one in five adults experience anxiety every year. Roughly one in six adults experience a major depressive episode at some point in any given year. Among young people, anxiety levels have been the highest they've ever been in all of recorded history. Emergency room visits for self-harm amongst teenagers more than doubled in the past decade. So, my obvious question to you is if we are so massively obsessed with ourselves and loving ourselves and caring for ourselves what isn't working? Why in the world is it failing so drastically? So, the question becomes what in fact is self-love? What does the Torah have to say about it? Does it have to say anything about it? Usually answers yes. Torah has to say a lot about a lot of things. I believe the story of Rebbe Akiva and the mitzvah of v'ahavta l'rei'acha kamocha could shake this whole thing up. We all know the story. >> [clears throat] >> Rebbe Akiva had 24,000 talmidim who died. These were the greatest people of the generation. If we would walk into the room and they were in it, we would be burnt from their holiness. That is how holy they were. And they died. So, we learned this story in first grade. I don't know if we thought about it since first grade, but we've learned it in first grade. And we heard our morah say it and we moved on. You ever thought about it? Shelo nigle kavod zeh ba zeh. They didn't give enough respect for one another. Like they didn't text their chaverusa, "Hey, great job listening to me today." Or they forgot to bring cupcakes on their chaverusa's birthday. They didn't like stand up and give a round of applause when someone asked a good question in class. Like what is the adult explanation for what they did wrong? I believe in order to understand any of it you have to do sort of a deep dive on the mitzvah of v'ahavta l'rei'acha kamocha. To any thinking person there should be two glaring questions about the mitzvah of loving your fellow Jew. Number one, how can I possibly be commanded to love another person? Love is an emotion, right? We're told love just comes to you, right? So, how could I be commanded by the Torah to love another person? I could be nice to them. I could be polite to them. I could have good manners towards them. But to love them like to love somebody like you really love them. How could I be commanded to love somebody? It's like imagine your daughter is dating a guy. And you think the family's great and they're like rich and prestigious and hush shmucka family, but your daughter is like, "I don't love him. I don't like him. I'm calling off I'm like I'm not going out with him anymore." And imagine if you would go over to your daughter and say, "I command you to love him." So, besides you being socially off, we would call the police on you. Isn't that what Hashem is doing? "I command you to love your fellow Jew." And not just your FELLOW JEW, BUT ALL 14.9 MILLION Jews in the world. How is it It's not possible. How is that possible? >> [snorts] >> And the second question that might even be more obvious than the first. The mitzvah of v'ahavta l'rei'acha kamocha is to love your fellow Jew the same way you love yourself. We are like the rest of nature immensely selfish. The minute we come out of our mother's stomach, we are thinking about ourself. It's just one long broadcast of me, me me me, me me me me me, me me me me me. Some people a little bit less, some a little more. There maybe like you come across like a tznius'd girl who's like selfless and like on Friday goes to visit people in the old loser TENT. BUT LIKE THAT'S WEIRD. MOST PEOPLE LIKE IT'S ALL ABOUT ME and why are you late picking me up? And I don't know I have to wait for you. And where's my Stanley? And what is going on? And I cannot deal with all this I'm stressed and it's about my job and my career and my kids and my psyche and my life. So, comes along the Torah and says a mitzvah, commandment, "Love your fellow Jew to the same degree that you love yourself." Is this like a joke? It's not possible. It's not humanly possible to love another person the same way you love yourself. It's not possible. So, what does it mean? Let me explain by beginning with a story. When I was in eighth grade I had a grand total of one boy in my grade and that was me. For whatever reason in Rochester where I grew up, there was one kid who moved. There was one kid who was Lubavitch. He went to Crown Heights to learn. I was the only kid in my grade. So, I had a chaverusa with myself. My academic rival was me. So, some classes I was in the seventh graders with the with them. But for other classes that I already took, I did what they called self-study in the office, which was their nice way of saying, "Here's a massive Rabbeinu Yonah history book and go write essays about it." So, there I am in eighth grade, which is the sort of the prime social year of your life, basically, where you should be going to your friends' bar mitzvah parties and hanging out and getting into trouble with your friends. And there I am pathetically in the office. There's the secretary and the principal and then there's me. And I'm sitting there writing essays like I'm a retired professor. So, I'm there. It's kind of pathetic. But I'm sort of soaking my way through this year. And there was a woman, an elderly lady. Her name was Mrs. Sandy Edison, who was sort of a educational advisor in the school, which is a fancy way of saying she cared for all the people that no one had time to care for. And she sits down across my desk. They gave me a little desk in the office one day. And she says, "I know this stinks. But I want to tell you a perspective that I think could change this." She says, "You are given an opportunity right now that most people will never have in their lifetime. And that is to discover and become comfortable with themselves. Because most people your age, they she she said, are so caught up, have no mental space for themselves. They are way too busy fitting in to discover and become comfortable with themselves. There's no mental space. But you do not have peer pressure because you don't have peers. So, this could be an opportunity for you to soak and get depressed or you can learn an ancient art of discovering your own soul, your strengths, your weaknesses, what you like, what you're good at. And you will have no peer pressure distracting you." She gets up and she walks away. I still think till this day that is the greatest piece of advice I've ever received from anyone. We are living in a world that is paranoid, paranoid of themselves. Paranoid. And I'm not talking about the world like out there in Zimbabwe. I'm talking about our world, this town. We are paranoid. We are forever thinking about, okay, what are they doing? What are they saying? Where are they eating? Where are they going? What are they doing? And we don't have space or time for ourselves, to discover ourselves and foster my imagination and my creativity and my dreams and aspirations. Like there is no time BECAUSE I AM WAY too busy focus on everybody else. Loving yourself in the guyish world means be obsessed with the way other people look at you. Obsessed. You should be swimming in makeup because that is the way other people perceive you and that's the only important thing that matters. Plastic sur- You don't like your face? Well, get rid of it and get a new one. Because that's how other PEOPLE WE ARE OBSESSED with the way other people perceive us. That is what self-love in the guyish world means. We love other people. So, your clothing should be as minimal as possible cuz so we want people to see your body. Because it's all about other people. And we have wellness retreats. We'll spend thousands of dollars going to Bali and Tuscany and Costa Rica to learn breathing techniques all so I could be well perceived by you. The Torah's definition of self-love means when you see yourself, do you see a body or do you see a soul? What do you see? Are you comfortable with yourself or are you paranoid about the external view that other people have about you? We live in a world where people cannot sit 10 seconds with their own thoughts, they become paranoid. Podcast, music, listen to something. I can't even be in the bathroom without reading something. I am paranoid about my own thoughts. Which by the way, as a side, a side issue that comes from this, is if we are so scared of our own thoughts, do you know the time of our day, at least for boys, but a lot of girls, where you're forced to stop what you're doing? It's when you extra. And suddenly all the thoughts that you should have been thinking the rest of the day, you know, like dreams and goals and like you're so All those thoughts come flooding into you when you extra and therefore forget about the diving for a second because now your brain can finally do what it's been begging you to do the whole day. Okay, but that's a side issue. We'll leave that for the feeler rant another time. Self-love according to the Torah is the ability to see through the jungle, which is your body, your soul and to befriend it and to become very comfortable with it. The more you see yourself as a soul, the the less you see yourself as a body, the less you see other people as bodies, the less you're threatened by other people because one second, she's a soul, I'm a soul, she's a soul. Okay, so she's prettier and skinnier and richer than me. Who cares? That's her body. That's irrelevant. She's a soul, I'm a soul. I cherish the inside. She's a beautiful soul. It doesn't bother me that you're externally more from because you have your struggles, I have my struggles, we're working together. I'm a soul, you're a soul. I could love you the same way I love myself because it's the soul that I love. A soul is a piece of Hashem. It's like when I went I once went to a blind mu- museum [clears throat] in Israel. Have you been to the blind museum in Israel? Have you been there? So, it's a tour but from a blind man through a blind street? I don't know what it is because I couldn't see it. They Everything is dark. You can't see it. You're They they sort of mimic what it mean what it feels like to be a blind person. And they set up different rooms where you can go and experience what it means to be blind. So, I'm going through all the different rooms. There's a bakery and there's a grocery store and there's a library and a post office and then the end is a cafe where all the people in the tour sit down and the tour guide who's blind, he serves you drinks. Whatever you ask, he gets it right, which is amazing cuz you want Coke, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, no problem. He brings you each one even though he's blind. And we were able to ask him questions, whatever we wanted. So, there were people who asked him, you know, dumb questions like, "You ever put salt in your coffee by mistake?" Or "You ever walk into the wrong house?" Cuz this was a man who he led his life by himself as a blind man. He was independent. I asked him a question. I said, "Is there anything about being blind that you're grateful for?" So, he said, "You know, that's a good question. There is. And that is that when I meet somebody, I could care less what they look like. Because I can't see them. So, I immediately care about how kind they are, about how deep they are, about if they're compassionate. That's the only thing I care about. And he told me, "Once you get past how fat, how skinny, how rich, how good-looking, how with it, how stylish, how not stylish somebody is, you realize people are fascinating. They're amazing. They're full of depth. They're souls. That is the after the maker. No one is forcing you to love every single person in class room. It's a mitzvah to look at yourself a little bit more like a soul. And once you do, you realize everyone's souls. And naturally, you love souls cuz you love Hashem. A soul is a piece of Hashem inside of you. No one's forcing you to tell me that were great, tell me that I'm But it didn't really trickle in enough where they saw themselves as a soul, they still viewed each other as competitors. That's a problem. The way you view your body is sort of the way you view life. You could go to a wedding and it could be a celebration of two souls that are now fusing together, both halves of their body, both halves of their soul. Or if you're a body kind of person, it's two bodies coming together. Let's just have a party. That's all it is. So, it becomes sort of like a way to show off and a way to taunt your your wealth. It's like when I I once went to a very fancy hotel in Canandaigua. Canandaigua's at the lake, one of the Finger Lakes in the in Upstate New York, very very beautiful part of the world. And there's a fancy hotel there called the Can- the Canandaigua. And I and I check in, I put my kid to sleep and I go with my wife to explore the hotel. Now, I'm not suggesting you do that. better to stay with your kid. But, that's what I did. So, I'm opening all the doors, I'm going It's exploring. It's a cool hotel. And there was a big ballroom in this hotel. They had weddings there. A lot of, you know, fancy people made their weddings there. And we're in the basement and I see there's a room called the bridal suite. So, there's no wedding in going on. So, I go in. I check it out. I'm curious. I go into this bridal suite. Bride is color, right? And I see a humongous room and in the little corner there's a mirror and everything else is empty except a the largest TV screen I've ever seen in my life. This was the type of TV The whole wall was a TV screen. It's the type of TV screen you're not sure if you're watching it or if it's watching you. And then there's a couch for right in front of it. And I'm thinking to myself like, I Is this so pathetic? You are so addicted to your TV that even on your wedding day, 5 minutes before you're about to get married, here you are with all your friends watching TV. But I realized, one second. This person has been this person's girlfriend This person is They've been together for 7 years. They have two kids. They've been living in the same house. This is simply a party. So, if it's simply a party, you're waiting for it to start, you got to kill the time. So, you watch TV. What do you want them to do? But you walk into a color suite and a terrace charmer chinka sprinzer. First of all, you walk in there, it's a tiny room. There's There's potato smashed into a chair. It looks like World War III and a tornado came through the room. Okay, there's nieces and nephews running in all over the place. But in the middle of it all, there is a color where you could be I'm wrong, I think almost 100% of the time, she is standing there in the middle of a 45-minute extra crying. She's fasting. It's Yom Kippur. She's using her unique spiritual powers as a color to dive in for her friend who can't have kids yet, who's 27, not married. She's diving in for her nephew went off the SHE'S DIVING IN FOR HER She's rivers of tears coming down. Why? Because my mom's getting married. I'M A SOUL ABOUT TO GET my other half. That is two ways of looking at the same exact thing. You go to a bris. Okay, it's another body coming into the world. Let's just have breakfast. Or one second, it's a soul. A soul came into the world. A soul came into the world. You go to a fire. Okay, there was a body and it died. Sort of like sad. Like, you know, he was having a good life and now he's dead. Or it's a soul that finished its task kid or it didn't complete its task kid, but either way it's sad, but it's also sort of a ceremony marking the end of a soul's career as a soldier in Hashem's army. Our entire outlook on life is Do you see souls or do you see bodies? That is the mitzvah of you have to to look a little bit deeper inside of you and become comfortable with yourself. If you look at the history of class room, you'll notice that almost all the great leaders were shepherds. Almost all. Abraham was a shepherd. Isaac was a shepherd. Jacob was a shepherd. The were shepherds. Joseph was a Rachel was a shepherd. Moses was a shepherd. Aaron was a shepherd. David was a shepherd. Rabbi Akiva was a shepherd. What's up with the shepherds? So you're going to tell me, "Well, what do you want them to do?" Like there's no orthodontist, no crooked orthodontist that they could work, you know. This is the olden days. So I'm not sure if that's so kosher, you know, you could be a merchant. You could be a shoemaker. You could be a carpenter. What Everyone's shepherds? So Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, he famously says that in order to be a leader, to attain greatness even in your own little world, you have to be very comfortable with yourself. You have to be very comfortable being alone. You're very comfortable doing your own thing. Being a shepherd is the perfect job for fostering people who are happy and comfortable with themselves. >> [snorts] >> These days, it's a great time to work on this mitzvah. But I want to add another layer to this. There's another layer to vihavta l'rei'acha kamocha that I think could increase our understanding a little bit more. In 1940, in in the 1940s 1946, there were orphanages all over Europe filled with babies, infants. These were war babies. They had no parents. They were killed or died from the war. And they were all in orphanages, and they were all lined up, you could imagine, crib after crib just lined up. And something peculiar started happening. They were all taken care of. The nurse would come in. They would give each baby what they need. Something strange happened. The babies started deteriorating. And no one knew why. There was no disease. There was no issues. They were all medically cared for. Nothing could explain why they were slowly withering away. You had babies that stopped crying. You had babies that just stared, didn't blink, just stared at the ceiling. And eventually, you had babies that started dying. No one understood why. So a a a psychoanalyst named René Spitz, a Jewish person from from Vienna, he came and took on the case. And he explored two side-by-side environments. He went to prisons where there were women who gave birth and were raising their kids in jail. And he observed how they were raising their children. And he concluded that in the year that he studied these women, a grand total of 0% of the babies died. Zero. Again, a jail, not exactly, you know, chop. It's not the best hospital. It's not a hospital. It's rats and disease. It's not good. But then he went to the orphanages and the hospitals with rows and rows and rows of infants. You know what the percentage of those that died in the 1946? The percentage of Jewish babies that died within the first year? 35% died. No explanation. And he observed the two environments, and he concluded the reason. True, in the prisons, they weren't necessarily getting the best medical care. It's dirty. However, there was one consistent mother who loved them day after day. But in the orphanages, in the hospitals, it was mechanical. You had a nurse come in, bottle for you, bottle for you, bottle for you, bottle for you, diaper for you, diaper for you, diaper for you. They would move on. There was no face that they recognized. There was no one who looked at them and looked at them longer than necessary or smiled at them or wiped away a tear. It was mechanical. It was robotic. It was cold. So they died. And one of the greatest psychological discoveries in the last 150 years, he realized that if people are underloved, they will die. Not they'll get depressed. Not they'll start dying their hair purple. Not they'll start putting on tattoos or run off to India. They will die. It might go slowly. It might lead to anxiety and then to bad heart diseases and then death. But it will lead to death. And here's the scary part. It doesn't limit itself to babies. It's anybody. If people are underloved and underappreciated and unnoticed and rolled at and laughed at, they will shrivel up and die. Slowly. It might lead to a heart attack at 40. It might not be a infant as dramatic as an infant dying in its crib. But they will slowly shrivel away. But here's the scariest part. If this is true about people not loving babies enough and people not loving other people enough, this is equally true if not more so if you don't love yourself enough. If you are so paranoid about other people and we don't love ourselves, and when I say love, I don't mean the American version. I mean the Jewish version. I mean loving your soul and your dreams and your character traits and your imagination and your personality and the kochos that Hashem gave you, you could wither away. It's not simply the talmidim of Rebbe Akiva were not noyei'a koved zeh ba'zeh. It's they were killing each other. We have a deep-ingrained need to be validated and be loved and feel important. True, we should expect it from other people, and you should do it to your kids and to your parents and to your siblings. But it can never start if we don't do it to ourselves. If we don't see the unbelievable, unfathomable holiness inside of us, we will slowly wither away and all our dreams and all our aspirations gone. And we will be at best mediocre and at worst, I don't want to say. We need in these times, the days where we're sort of getting over the chet of the talmidim of Rebbe Akiva, to love ourselves more, to see ourselves as souls more. The very first halacha in all of Shulchan Aruch, does anyone know what it is? The very first, not the second or third or fourth or fifth. The first halacha in all of Shulchan Aruch is hisgaber ka'ari, to get up like a lion. So for years I thought that meant, don't get up late. But then when I was thinking to myself, like there's no way that's what it means. Like who who is getting up late? Like like I mean we have kids. We have jobs. You know what I mean? Like what you're The entire Shulchan Aruch is is talking to 10th grade girls? That's The entire Shulchan Aruch is talking to? Doesn't make sense. And another question that you should be asking is, do you know that lions sleep more than every single animal in the entire animal kingdom except two? Koalas and bats. Get up like a lion. You know what time lions get up? At 5:00 in the afternoon when the sun in Africa is setting and it's cooler and then they could go eat a zebra and then call it another day and sleep for the the next 22 hours. Get up like a lion. Makes no sense. So obviously that's not what it means. What it means is you should be walking down the street with the spirit of a lion. I don't care what you think. I don't need to spend a thousand dollars on a pair of shoes for you to validate me. What? I have a neshama worth a billion dollars. I have a neshama my grandparents died in Treblinka to protect. I don't need makeup that were the thousand dollars and take a 10-week course on makeup. What? It's insane. Now that they're the parnassah is great, go for it. I'm not You know what I'm saying. It's insane. We need to walk with stoltz. Stoltz doesn't mean I'm more yeshivish than you. I'm firmer than you. It means I am a soul. I am working hard. I'm trying my best. I'm discovering myself. I have my issues the same way you have your issues. Your issues might be a little bit more hidden than my issues. Doesn't make them any worse or better. I am comfortable with my soul. The reason the Jewish people survive more than any other group of people on Earth is because we have things you The one thing we cherish is the one thing you can't take away from us. And when entire empires build their empire over power and money, when the power and money is gone, they're gone. But we don't. We cherish the one thing you can't take away, and that is a neshama. The more we attach ourselves to a neshama, the more blissful our life can be. I don't need to to renovate my kitchen for the fourth time in 5 years. I don't care cuz it's more important for me that my kids are happy. That my husband's happy. That I'm happy. That's more important. I'd rather take the money, go on a road trip, see nature, see Hashem's world, have guests with lots of gishmak food. The way we see ourselves is the way we see the world, the way we live this one life that we have. I was once, speaking about trains, I was once on a train ride, an 11-hour train ride from Baltimore to Rochester, where I live. And I'm in an empty car, and in walks empty car. In walks a a 450-lb man. And he [snorts] scans all the empty seats, and he sits next to me. The guy There's fat spilling into my seat. I'm thinking like, you are obviously a leyonovi because why else would you sit right here? I mean, so just No, just tell me what I need to know in Yiddish. So after 5 minutes, he turns to me and he says, "You want to hear my life story?" So I'm thinking like, first of all, anybody that's offering to tell you their life story, it's probably an interesting story. Like it's probably not going to be like, "Yeah, I grew up in Livingston and I went to Rutgers and now I'm a dentist in Delaware." Right? That's probably not what it's going to be. It's probably going to be an story. So, I said, "Sure. I got 11 hours." She says, "When he was a baby, his parents often stayed a very high-end luxury hotels. And at one time, he was brought along, and by mistake, he was dropped by his mother into a boiling bath. And he was taken out, but he had a lot of burns on his body. And they sued the hotel, and they won millions of dollars, which were placed in a bank account in his name. And those millions turned into dozens of millions by the time he turned 18. He looks at me, he said, "The minute I turned 18, I took all the money, which was in my name, and I left my house, never never to see my parents again. I just ran. And I explored. And I got married five times, he says. I got divorced five times. I can't be bogged down to any I got to do try everything I got to go everywhere. And he says, "You want to know how I spend my time, my life? I travel up the railroad. And I stop off at every town that I think is interesting, and I check out the best place, and the best restaurants, and I go meet the most interesting people, and then I hop back on the train, and I go again in another town." And as he's telling me this story of his, he sees that we're pulling into a station in a small little town in in Pennsylvania somewhere. He's like, "Hey, wait a minute. I never tried this town." And he gets up, and he leaves. And as he's leaving, he turns to me and he says, "Nice chatting with you, son. You just met the freest man on the face of the earth." And he wattles off the train into his little life. The next day, I'm in Rochester. Whenever I was there, I tried to visit certain tzaddik who was in an old age home there. Very very difficult life. Never had kids. Had horrible diseases that ravaged his body his whole life. And he was in an old age home. I walk into the old age home. I'm sure you've been to old age homes. Or if you haven't, you should go. It's not exactly the circus. You know, it's not exactly a carnival. They're looking at you, old people, at like as if like how dare you take your youthful energetic body and parade it march it right in front of us old dying people. Like that's the look. I'm like, okay. Let me just go straight to this guy's room. I asked the nurse, "Where's his room?" I go to the fourth floor. Before I even get onto the floor, the hallway where his room is, I hear coming out of his room a song. He's singing. Tanya Hak Tish'a S'chaneni. He is singing. I go into his room. He can't move. So, he had a nurse take a shtender and prop it up with string from like a pole, and there's a safer that he's a learning from. And he's singing. The happiest guy. And I couldn't get over the difference between the two people. Here's a guy who has everything, and he has nothing. Because his whole life is his body, feeding his body, pleasuring his body, making sure his body's good. Here's a person who his entire life is his soul. So, you could take away everything, and he's happy. I'm not saying we should become that. But a little bit. Where I don't need so much. Where it's okay. Where I have mental space to realize I'm a soul. Why am I wasting my time with other people's stupid and nourishkeit and body obsessing? Every single person in this room was once upon a time sitting in shamayim with their little family circle when a malach came into shamayim, opened the door, and said, >> [clears throat] >> "Racheli Goldstein, your time has come to descend onto this earth." Everyone's looking around. Who's Racheli Goldstein? And it's you. And you stand up, and your whole section stands up. They're so proud. This is your time. And they escort you. Your great uncles there, great grandparents, great great great your great great great grandparents to the Everyone's escorting you to the edge of shamayim. And right before you jump, you're handed by the malach a little seed. He says, "See this seed? This is a neshama. Plant it." You take the seed, you put it into your pocket, you look back, you see all your family members the mamash cheering and davening. They're hoping and praying that you give nachas ruach to them and to their grandparents and to Hashem. And you jump into this world. You get right to work. You know that seed's important. So, you put that seed into a box to protect it. You put the box in your room. You make sure the box has proper lighting. Then you notice, okay, people are painting their box interesting colors. Oh, okay. So, you paint your box interesting colors. And then you see, oh, people are covering their box with like this Gucci cloth. But you can't afford Gucci cloth. So, you get a second job. Then you see people started covering their box with this like Moncler like fancy cloth. You can't afford Moncler fancy cloth. So, you know what you do? You marry guy who's [snorts] like eh, but he has a good job and has a lot of money, but he's like eh, but whatever. And now you can afford Moncler cloth. And then you saw that people are not doing metal cloth metal boxes anymore. So, you ditch the metal box, you go with wood like this mahogany wood. People are really into that. Then you see Saks Fifth has this sale a new type of boxes with this lip. So, you get that box. And then you see corduroy is really in style. So, you switch it with corduroy. Now your box is with corduroy. Then you see people have these $900 diffusers around their box. You're like, I got to get one of those. So, you get one of those around your box. And then you see the gallery is saying that everything you are wearing is last year's season. It's unwearable. So, you go into the gallery, you get all the new cloth to cover your box. This goes on for 120 years. And you're sitting in a hospital bed. And the same malach comes back. He says, "I'm back. Time to go." And you're dead. And you go up to shamayim, and there's a knock on the door, and the door is open, and there's an announcement, "Racheli Goldstein has come back." There's a whole commotion. Your whole family section rises to their feet. They have such hope in their eyes. They come rushing to the edge of shamayim. They're escorting They're looking to see the tree that came out of your seed. And you're holding a seed. And they're like, "What? You never You never planted the the seed?" And you're like, "I took care of the of the box." The malach looks at you like, "You idiot." And your great grandparents and your great great grandparents and your great uncle who was killed in Auschwitz and your great nephew that was killed by a truck and your great great uncle went off the derech and was chazer b'tshuva at the last minute. They're all looking at you like, and they return to their seats. These are days where we could really look at ourselves and see, am I just building a box, or am I planting a seed? And the way we answer that question will be the way we look at yourself, others, and your life around you. Some of you may know I like to travel, and I don't know if you guys see my video. Either way. Last year, I had to get a passport for my daughter cuz we were going on a trip to China. I actually went today to get a passport for my son. An additional son. So, we're getting a passport for my daughter. She was 3 months old at the time. It's a little tricky to hold up your daughter for the picture because they have a camera, and they have a white screen, but I need to hold her up. But my hand can't be in the picture. So, it had to be like a specific angle, and I wasn't getting in her eyes, and she was throwing up, and there's 750 people waiting. And they're not patient. So, I came up with an idea. I said, "Maybe, you know what? There's a there's a We were in a mall. This is the Ocean County Mall or the I think it's called that. And right next to the passport center, there's a dollar store. So, I said, "You know what? Let me go next door. I'll get a $1 tablecloth, a white tablecloth. I'll drape it over the stroller that she's in. I'll put her in the stroller, and then you take a picture there." So, that's what we did. I take my my 4-year-old son at the time. I go running through the mall to the dollar store. I'm looking all over for the white sheet. I find one. I buy it. I come hustling back. I dodge the cans of tuna that they're throwing at me, the people online. And I go I ran I I put it on the the stroller. We take the picture. Good. Valid. I turn back. My son's gone. Just gone. So, at that exact minute, every single possible headline comes flashing into your brain. Okay, he's kidnapped. Every single person in the mall is a suspect. Yeah, that guy looks stressed. Yeah, you're a serial killer. Yeah, it's you. I envision my son, he's inside like a suitcase. He's being loaded onto a truck. He's being like hauled off to Mexico, shoved in a tunnel. And I frantically panic. I'm looking all over the place. And I sort of retrace my steps and I walk into the dollar store and there he is. Just casually in the toy aisle looking at the toys. And I was saying to myself like, how are you so calm? Like he knew I wasn't next to him. The answer is is because he had no clue the dangers of random people seeing a four-year-old in a mall. He didn't know the repercussions of what it means to kidnap and murder and mutilation. He doesn't know. But I know. We might not know what it means to get lost in the mall of life and to just sit there and in the toy aisle completely naively unaware that our soul is dying, is murdered and kidnapped. But Hashem knows. And he will never give up. And he will never give you peace, ever. Until you make peace with your soul. It's not possible to be peaceful and to live a harmonious life if the soul is ignored. It's not possible. I know that there are a lot of ads and a lot of newspapers that will try to convince you otherwise. It's not possible. Because Hashem loves you too much. I want to end with a story. One last story. This you might know also. There was a guy his name was George Dantzig. George Dantzig was a regular 22-year-old guy in the University of California, Berkeley. And he was taking a class called advanced mathematics. And one day he walked in a late. And he sort of tiptoes in. He slides into his seat. And he quickly copies the two homework questions that the teacher wrote on the the blackboard. Back then it was blackboards or the whiteboard. Later that night, he sits down to do the homework. Makes himself a nice tea. And he's looking at the homework and it's hard. He's like, okay. Roll up your sleeves. Over an hour he spends on these two pretty sophisticated problems. The next day he walks over to the teacher to hand in his homework. The teacher goes what is this? What do you mean what is this? What are you handing me? The homework from yesterday. I didn't give homework yesterday. So what were those two questions on the board? The professor gets up grams the paper out of George's hand and starts looking at it over and over again. He's reading it. He's reading it. He's reading it. He's reading it. He's And he jumps up. And he says, George, I don't believe it. George, I don't believe it. Those weren't homework questions. Those were two of the most famous unsolved math problems that never been solved. You, my friend, has just solved two math problems that have baffled the minds of the greatest mathematicians in all of world history. You know? George Dantzig, who was a regular guy, who did not think of himself as this uber smart math geek, but because he came late to class, did not hear the professor say, you can't do that. It's an unsolvable problem. He didn't hear. He thought it was homework. So he went and he rolled up his sleeve and he did it. And what was discovered was that he actually is a real math geek. He became one of the most famous mathematicians in American history, which many of our gadgets that we have today, including lasers and computers, are because of his wisdom. We are all the exact same way. We walk around thinking average, whatever, irrelevant. It's a mistake. It's a lethal mistake. If you see the infinitely gorgeous, beautiful, harmonious, holy soul inside of you, you walk like a lion. I want to leave with one comment. I don't know if I'm overstepping my boundaries here. But from what I understand about what your seminary is, I'd like to be what Mrs. Sandy Eisen was to me in eighth grade to you. It's tempting in life to want to be where everyone else is and have the big class and the big grade and the ton of friends and the wit and and the everyone the head and everyone looks to you and the most people and the most looks and everyone boxes checked. And it's tempting to get down on yourself or to wish or to imagine or to do so all sorts of psychological tricks about what could have been if what and the other. But perhaps the whole time it's a gift that Hashem is giving you to help you discover you. Something that most people never discover. They are too busy chasing everybody else. Perhaps Hashem orchestrated your life to give you the opportunity to be comfortable with yourself, which is the greatest gift you can get. Every single great person by definition, whether it's great in the business world or in the spiritual world, greatness by definition means you're comfortable doing things other people aren't. If every businessman did everything the same, no one would become billionaires. They'd all be the same level. If every godol went to sleep the exact same time as everyone else in the yeshiva, they'd never learn more, they'd never wake up early, they'd never work on their middos more. Greatness by definition means you are comfortable, not just comfortable, proud of yourself. So I leave you with this. These times take an extra minute to appreciate a rare opportunity you might have. Discovering yourself. Being okay with yourself. Being proud about the neshama that's inside of you. And when you do you will spend the rest of your life