It's Not About Results | Rabbi Sholom Ber Sorotzkin

Any one of us knows when he makes a Siyum for a Masechta, we say a Tefillah. And any day we walk into the Beis Medrash, we say the same Tefillah. Our מעלה, we get שכר on our effort. They don't get שכר on their efforts. I don't understand. Anybody saw somebody working in a job and he doesn't get a salary? הם עמלים ואינם מקבלים שכר? I don't think there's anyone who doesn't get a salary, he stops to work. If he doesn't get a salary, he makes a strike. How can you say, הם עמלים ואינם מקבלים שכר? I heard once from a big Talmid Chacham, I think he heard it from R’ Aharon Kotler, זכרונו צדיק וקדוש לברכה. He said a very nice Mashal. He said he was walking in the street once, in the middle of the summer, and he saw three people working. One of them was digging. He was breaking the concrete and digging and digging, sweaty and working hard. There was another person over there, who was taking strings and measuring with the strings. And there was another person who was going around over there, smoking a cigarette. Who gets the biggest salary? We can think, the guy who is working the hardest. No. The guy with the cigarette’s getting the biggest salary. He's working the least. The guy who gets the least salary is the guy who’s digging, sweating and working. What's the Pshat in it? In עולם הזה, you only get שכר of what comes out. If you order any table from anybody, and he works on it ten years and you don't get it, you don't pay for it. You don't get paid for the effort. Effort is nothing. Only the תוצאה, whatever comes out in the end. In Yiddishkeit, it’s the opposite. The most שכר we get, we get a שכר on the effort, on עמידה בניסיון, on what’s hard for us, not only on what comes out. עולם הזה, you get only on what comes out. The effort doesn't count. And it could be more than that. In Yiddishkeit, the effort, this is the תוצאה. This is what the Ribono shel Olam wants from us. What’s hard for you, hard for us, and we stand in it, and we try to stand in it, this is what the Ribono shel Olam wants from us. We can go sometimes on the street and we feel bad. I'm not exactly... You have to know, we have to respect every effort, every עמידה בניסיון, every try, the smallest try. We get שכר on this. We make such a Nachas Ruach for the Ribono shel Olam. This is what the Ribono shel Olam wants from us. This is what he’s looking from us. אנו עמלים ומקבלים שכר. בהצלחה.