Looky, Looky! | Rabbi Gavriel Friedman

If there are three things you can be certain of in this world, it's death, taxes and the Yetzer Hara. We are constantly being called to look over here, look over there, always trying to get our attention. To me, this is reminiscent of my family and I, we went on a trip and we went on a hike and we ended up at the top of this mountain. And there was a fellow on the top of the mountain who clearly, English was not only his first language, it wasn't his second language or even his third language. And he kept yelling, Looky, looky! And my kids till today, they always say, Looky, looky! So eventually, we look. And this guy, he starts pulling a string out of his nose, and it just keeps going and going. And then this one out of his ear, and he's taking coins out of every part of his body. And then he takes out a coloring book and he... he flips it. He says: Looky, looky! Atención, atención! Looky, looky! And he's flipping through and it's totally empty. He flips the other way. Looky, looky! And what happens? It's magically filled with stuff. Clearly, the guy's trying to make some sort of living over here. I don't know how much he made. He didn't make any off of me. But looky, looky, keep looking. This is the Yetzer Hara. It keeps telling us, Look over here, look over there. But is it worth it? I look at this guy and like, Okay, bro, like, if it would have been a good trick, but you know what? It wasn't a good trick. How many times do we look when the Yetzer Hara says: Look, come look over here. Come, go over there. Come see the other. How many of us, at the end, have said, That was so worth it. I am thrilled that I looked. I believe that all of us know that we look and afterwards we say, Why did I do that? I could have not done that. I could have overcome that challenge in that struggle. It was so easy. Do you know what, though? It's only easy after you looked. Before you looked, it seems impossible to overcome. The Gemara in Sukkah 52a famously tells a story. Well, it's more of an idea. It’s speaking about what's going to happen לעתיד לבוא. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is going to take the Satan, the Angel of Death, the Satan, He’s going to slaughter the Yetzer Hara. And when He Shechts the Yetzer Hara, He slaughters it, the Tzaddikim are going to be crying and the Resha’im are going to be crying. And each one is going to look and they're going to see something different. The Tzaddikim are going to see the Yetzer Hara as a huge mountain, and the Resha’im are going to see it כחוט השערה, like a hair's breadth. And each one are going to be crying. What are they going to be crying over? Well, the Tzaddikim are going to say: Whoa. When they overcame the struggle, in that moment, when everything is saying: Looky, looky! and they don't look, but there's a temptation, that temptation is huge, that temptation is so big, but they don't look, then it seems to them like a mountain. And this crying is this tears of joy, of like, Wow, I overcame the struggle over here. There’s different Pshatim, by the way. But they saw this incredible struggle, this... it looked like a mountain to me. But the Resha’im, after they fell to it, they look at it and say: That's what I looked at? Was it worth it? I didn't have to fall for that. How silly was I that I fell and I looked at such a thing. So though, of course, it's never going to stop, that sound is going to be continuing until the end of days, of “Looky, looky!”, we just have to ask ourselves, Do we want to look back and say, That was as a hair’s breadth and I so easily could have overcome it. Or do we want to say, That was a huge mountain, but with the help of Heaven, I was able to overcome it.