Stop Putting Your Need to be Perfect on Hashem - Rabbi Mordechai Burg

i was recently listening to a podcast from an old friend of mine dr akiva pearlman i knew him before he was famous and he said something on this podcast and it really just blew my mind that i want to share it with you he said it's so frustrating so difficult for him to have conversations with people that are pretending to be perfect he said you're putting your need to be perfect on me the listener and that's so uncomfortable and i really just never thought about it that way before you know we're all putting on an act to some degree putting our best self forward and you know to some degree that's even appropriate you know we're not meant to share all of our challenges trials and tribulations with people who were just you know regularly friendly with but it's possible for us to you know pretend to be somebody that we're not and not necessarily to be vulnerable and courageous in conversations with real people that deserve to really hear our truth i always thought about that as like the person is suffering from perfectionism and that's a very real thing to suffer from but what i never thought about is what's it like to be the listener of somebody who's trying to be perfect i never thought about what we're putting on others when we try to be perfect then i started thinking about that in the context of our relationship with hashem [Music] as we head towards owl now i started to think about what's it like from hashem's perspective when we are pretending to be perfect when we're not willing to have the real conversation and especially because he already knows everything that we've already done it's like why are you putting your need to be perfect on me i never expected that from you i created you to be imperfect i created you to have the opportunity to do chuva and all of the wonderful things that come along with imperfection and so it's probably a deeply uncomfortable feeling for akadesh baruch to have to watch us pretend to be people that we're not especially when he's willing to accept us for who we are and i think that's the assault of chuva that's the sort of ill it's opening up and having a real conversation with akadosh barhu about the things that we struggle with and that really is the tahlish habrilla kaduspah who created us to have a dwelling place in the world down below are we really inviting hashem into our lives if we're pretending to be perfect is this not a way of pushing hashem out and how deeply uncomfortable is that for him so maybe this ella let's do something a little bit different maybe this ll let's be really honest let's abandon our own notion of perfectionism not only because we're suffering but more importantly because hashem is suffering he doesn't want to be part of this conversation he doesn't want to have those quote unquote needs put upon him he wants to engage in a real relationship with us and we want to engage in a real relationship with him and that i think is the realisation [Music]