Living With Emunah (Part 229) - Embracing the Present

good morning boko tov ladies welcome back to living with amuna hope everybody is successfully caffeinating with kavanagh foreign we have our disposable free caffeinated with kavanagh cups where you can buy the mug after the sheer one thank our generous sponsors the yamuna series sponsors for the year dr xavier and bella morgan in memory of dr brian galbin in memory of bella's mother dr ellen chancellor this morning's sheer is also sponsored by the chandelson family commemoration of the first year site of sarah's mother very special woman carol parsons talk who's in the shama and aliyah thank you for that sponsorship thank you sir for all that you do tremendous tribute to your mom's neshama also thank you to lynn friedman who contributed to the sponsorship of our emunah cops thank you for that generosity and helping make them available to all we are learning all about simcha we are still in the second month of adar double the trouble double the fun double the simcha but soon it will be nissan the month of gaula we are rapidly heading towards gula but we're still in the period of and the truth is that simcha applies all year round is not reserved only for the two months of ada or the ordinary one month of out there but is all year round you have to feel simcha you have to have joy last week i wrote the article based a lot on our class here about smiling that happiness as we say every week is not an emotion happiness is a decision it is a determination you get out of bed in the morning and you are determined and you make the decision to be happy don't wait to feel happy to smile start smiling and the micro muscles you engage in your face will release endorphins and adrenaline which will bring you a sense of happiness i hope that you have all been in fact doing that i hope that you have been smiling and changing the environment in your homes in your carpool and uh at work in the gym and everybody smiles in the gym but everywhere else ever you only smile when you're leaving the gym you're done at the gym is when you smile let's see if we can raise the temperature um so smiling don't wait to be happy to stop smile start smiling and you will and you will feel happy and i hope that people will um this week's article i'm sharing from the extraordinary leviah that we had on sunday our community lost a young man who was diagnosed with duchenne's muscular dystrophy at three years old suffered for 21 years didn't suffer lived for 21 years with it and passed away last week and we had a very very sad tragic very heartfelt uh funeral cabernet beautiful levia on sunday afternoon and it was extraordinary how corey's father ed and his two sisters alana naomi all in their eulogies all thanked hashem for the gift of having had corey during those years and did not express any protest or anger or resentment or bitterness or questions of why or where was god but used the opportunity to thank hashem and it was genuine there was nothing that was disingenuous about that but they did something else also and they talked about and again i'm going to quote their actual speeches in the article this week but ed corey's father said that in fact the day that corey's neshama left this world late thursday night was not even as difficult as 21 years earlier the day that they got the diagnosis that their lives would forever be different that he would never end up having to play catch or being able to do the things a lot of fathers and sons get to do with corey and that ultimately they never walked him down the aisle and he did not live a long life so the day they got that diagnosis and that determination was an even harder day and that night they had an upsharing of a close friend that night they had a simcha to attend and he described that he and randy decided we're going to that simcha that we're going to not let this diagnosis take away our happiness in life and they were determined to go to the simcha as a symbol of the way they would live their lives for the next whatever years that they had their son corey despite the challenging situation that he would live with and that's exactly what they did they lived with that sense of simcha they went to asim that evening and they lived with the simcha and then their daughter spoke about she was they were at a muscular dystrophy conference together as a family and the speaker who convened the conference had lost two sons to muscular dystrophy and in the speech mentioned that her two sons had died from muscular dystrophy and naomi i think she said she was six at the time eight she was eight years old at the time she knew her brother was different and had this disability and diagnosis but she had no idea what it meant and when she heard the speaker say that she burst into tears she turned to her mother and she said you mean corey is going to die and then she ran out of the room crying and her mother followed her she recalled all these years later exactly what her mother said to her she said cry let out this cry and then put yourself together we're going to go right back into that room and we're going to choose to be happy because we're going to make corey's life as happy as possible we're going to live every moment every day to its fullest and we're going to surround them with positive energy with happiness and we cannot control or change what this diagnosis but we can control and change how we live each day and how we live our lives that was her determination her decision and it became their family's determination and decision that's who they were and how they lived literally until his very last moment and we are all thrown things hopefully not as challenging that you can't change you can't control there are circumstances you cannot change and you cannot control we can control how we react we can control how we feel we can choose there's a perfect example powerful example that's why i want to write it up it was an extraordinarily powerful powerful example it was particularly poignant because i drove from the cemetery to a wedding of two young people from the shul and it's a very difficult transition it was a real rabbinic day it wasn't only me several people from the shul who went both to the funeral and immediately or directly to the to the wedding and uh changing gears compartmentalizing going to a sim card and being present it's tough it's not easy but i drew strength from raishenbergs who went from that diagnosis of the three-year-old if there's any simcha that you can get an excuse to not go to no offense to anyone who's made an up sharon but if you can get out of anything it should be an option options are important they're beautiful for those who have that min ugh more power to you but if there's anything that you could say so sorry couldn't make it on a day that you got a terrible diagnosis of your child your only son pretty sure they could have gotten out of it but not only did they not get out of the out of the simcha they went that night and i had a suspicion that i knew who's up sharon it was because i remember only one person 21 years ago made a out of control over the top insane party up sharon he was very excited to have his boy and uh at the funeral in the parking lot the father who made the up sharon gave ed the biggest hug who put the tissues here today who knew [Laughter] that father gave him the biggest hug and said i had no idea what happened in your life that day i can't believe you came that means that not only did they attend the upsharing they didn't wear it on their sleeve nobody knew they made the decision to be smile and to be happy i'm sure they cried i'm sure they were focused on what it meant and what it would mean but for those moments at the upsharing they put a smile on their face so that father gave him a big hug 21 years later now all of you are making me cry can't look at any of you okay let's go into our text but anyway the point is the point is that um there are role models in our life there are extraordinary people we talk about it wednesdays we give a little pep talk we have a little pep rally smile don't worry be happy smile the whole world smiles with you we make cups we make notebooks we make magnets we do whatever we can to smile whatever we need that's how hard it is but then you encounter you know nobody nobody told the russian birds listen i'm in the middle of the series on simra see if you could weave into your eulogies something about choosing to be out let me set them up for this this is who they are this is who they are who they've been who they will be and they made that choice and we have the ability to latch on you could jump on you could ride the coattails so next time you feel like frowning or being sad or miserable or resentful or negative or hypercritical or complaining because the internet's out in your house or because i don't know what so just think about this funeral think about these people and so many others like them every holocaust survivor who ever smiled again in their whole life after everything they lost and went through and chose it's a decision it's a decision so many people they just relinquish the control they think that we can't not in charge it's not ours but it's our decision it's our decision to be happy it's our decision it's not an emotion of course there's an emotional component to it but it's not purely an emotion it is a decision and we can make that decision to be happy it's in our power to make that decision to be happy okay we are on kufnonv i think right 156. shahid sneaks into a person and fills our mind with thoughts of sadness of what was me what is the source of so much sadness in people when we think about something that's missing or that isn't or that wasn't we think about something that's lacking whether it's physical or whether it's spiritual physical or spiritual vitrusha meshatakes so people get sad and people are brought down by a memory a negative memory or by a negative realization a recognition when we think about a previous or past failure we think about a previous or past failed dream or expectation we think about a previous or past sadness it grips us it overwhelms us and it makes us become hopeless and helpless despair and despondent and at times it makes us give up and we don't want to continue we don't want to strive and we don't want to try and we don't want to push it makes us give up says richard meyer uber practice i have said when a person thinks it's my fault i'm a failure i blew that relationship i blew that deal i blew those years of my life that i wasn't religiously as motivated or inspired as i could have or should have been so i'm a failure not that i had a failure but i am a failure if only i had done if only i had said and only if i had been if only i had been motivated then i could have been what i could have been there's an incredible quality there's an amazing feeling that people have which is so dangerous and damaging and that is regret regret can be inspiring and motivating and powerful and positive if forget regret pushes you to make up for lost time if regret motivates and inspires you to transform yourself to be a better version of yourself now but if all regret makes you do is marinate and stew and become paralyzed in the past if regret just makes you wish you had a time machine when you don't and therefore fills you with sadness sadness it's one of the saddest things in the world is to see someone with regret to wake up late in life and have such regret but it's never too late and it's never over there always a chance you'll say well there are regrets of people who are no longer here and those relationships can't be mended in the physical world but they can spiritually there are conversations that carry on even with the neshamas who are no longer here at every funeral i do i give a little pep talk to the family right before the burial and i say i learned this from one of my teachers that we don't bury people we bury bodies bodies fail and give out and we bury bodies but we don't bury people their neshama is immortal and is eternal and is around us always and whenever we want to continue that conversation we can we can we ordinarily can't hear them speaking back sometimes you can if you actually hear them speaking back make an appointment with someone but i mean there's a premonition there's a feeling there's something that happens you see their picture you hear their song come on the radio you see a sign you can feel their presence you can feel that ongoing conversation so even the regret of a conversation you didn't have can be made up for because we don't say goodbye to people we don't bury people we say goodbye and we bury their bodies not who they are they are still here and will be forever as we will be to the people around us one day so regret if regret motivates and pushes you if you regret eating the shelf among us last night there's some themes that seem to repeat themselves here in the ammunition i'm happy to tell you my cape cod potato chips are still sealed the one with the sign that said don't don't open still sealed but i'm not a chocolate guy but i found last night in the cabin an entire bag of the chocolates from shalhamanas it's like so like a little twix and a little and a little uh snickers and a little reese's dark chocolate reese's wow anyway i'm still not a chocolate guy but you speak about regret trust me when i woke up this morning the very first feeling i thought i had was regret i promise you so there are insignificant regrets like that but they're big regrets spiritually you made a mistake spiritually you veered down the wrong path spiritually you engaged behaviors or practices or conduct spiritually you neglected who you could have and should have been they have said mashahib sid and you've lost out on what you've lost out on and it's gone it's gone and the itsahara this is the voice of the atara that has you live in the past the voice of the eight sahara is trying to get us stuck in the past the voice of the italian is trying to have us live only in that dimension of the past let's get us you know why what happens when you get stuck and you live in the past what happens when you're consumed with regret what are you forfeiting and where are you not living in the present and the only place that you can live is the present past is the past that's why it's history the future is not yet here all we have is the present that's why it's called the gift yes from hashem all we have is the present that's all we have it's the only dimension you can live in so the past can inform the present and we can live in the present to prepare for the future but the only dimension you cannot go back in time to the past and you cannot fast forward even sometimes as much as we want to to the future the only dimension that we get to live in is the present do not forfeit or concede the present because you're stuck in the past or because you're living and anticipating for the future you see this in different generations young people are so living in their future they're not in the present college am i going to get married i'm going to be i'm going to work hey just right now how about cleaning up your room it's just in the present why don't you help me get ready for pesach in the present and you have older people who they sit and they're forfeiting neglecting their present because they're just living in the past they want to tell you a story you've heard the story 4 billion times they just want to tell you the same story they just want to show you the same pictures they just want to go in the same time machine back to the past and you say that's all amazing and it's beautiful and i don't care if you're wheelchair-bound i don't care what medications you're on i don't care what limitations you have you still have a present you have a present what do you want to do with your present what phone calls do you want to make what books do you want to read what classes do you want to attend what model do you want to be for your children and grandchildren what legacy do you want to leave who do you want to be in your present the only dimension we live in is the present can't go back to the past we're not yet up to the future and regret regret tries to get us stuck in the past and convince us we have no future and in the process we give up our present and that's the only place that we have this is the notebook where's elana where's our notebook our notebook turn the page turn the page you have a new present turn the page because this page which is miserable this page this page which he spelled coffee on this page which is illegible this page which writes down some mistakes and bad news could turn the page that doesn't mean that some things on yesterday's page are not going to come with you to today's page but turn the page go to the footnote not only the spiritual world the emotional world do we have regrets that debilitate us that paralyze us and that cause us to forget the future the present so to in the physical world material world jackie mason allah shalom jackie mason has an entire routine every jew has a building in manhattan they could have owned here's a whole routine you drive by i was going to buy that build i should have i could have owned that building everybody has there's a whole routine about it that's that whole jewish mentality you know how many lagos i could have owned 1999 when i moved here 90 thousand dollars a lago 1999. so in the spiritual world we get stuck and the physical world how many buildings i could have owned you know that bad investment i never should have made or the investment i should have gone into the material world we have regrets when you see pictures of yourself from the 70s what you are wearing a lot of regrets but one has to dispel and push away these thoughts how what is the tool what is the instrument how do we push away those thoughts of regret let's go charcoal because to remember that everything is from above everything is from hashem and things were orchestrated the way they were meant to be that doesn't mean we don't have accountability it doesn't mean there aren't consequences it doesn't mean that we did not express our own personal choice and personal will we did however even within that it was all orchestrated from above you cannot turn back the clock all you can say is this is the way it was meant to be and it all contributes to who i am now so if i allow it to contribute to who i am now by learning from it and growing from it and either wanting to repeat it or wanting to never repeat it then i give it meaning retroactively but if it just holds me back and holds me down and fills me and overwhelms me with regret and therefore i lose my present then it's continuing to be a negative influence on me orchestrates creates a world as if we have free will but at the end of the day he is directing us towards the free will that we express how he made us who he made us when he made us what worlds he made us into what iq iqe gave us what emotional iq he gave us with artistic athletic ability the dna and the genetics he gave us all that predisposes us so that when we think we're making a choice when we think we're expressing free will ultimately we are really just realizing what he had put in place to begin with so when we look back on our lives all we can be and all we're responsible for is right now but any regret or guilt or shame for the past those are unhealthy feelings because one needs to look at all that and say i need to learn from it and grow from it and better myself from it but it's all from above it's all what was meant to be now who do i want to be today because that's all that matters i know it's the era of pesach but i'll tell you an error of rosh hashanah is the gemara in rosh hashanah says that when we appear before god and rosh hashanah when we prepare all month of elul and we come before god in judgment for those 10 days what's god judging us for on rosh hashanah when you sit in shul all day you'll keep her all day what are you being judged for so every young child thinks wake them in the middle of the night and i'll tell you what are you being judged for the past year were you a good boy or a good girl a bad boy a bad girl what kind of year will god give you god's got the whole video playing of your year the surveillance camera of your year what kind of a year did you have god is evaluated but that's wrong it's entirely wrong roshani and kippah are not about the past at all how could you say such a thing not about the past at all the answer is they're about the present now the past informs your present so if you're sitting in shul thinking about six months ago that great average you did and how good it feel and how amazing it was and how much you want to do it again then it's not the past it's the present and god's judging you for that thought and that nostalgia and that wish and that dream and that craving in the present how could we be accountable for our past we can't change it you can't be accountable for things you can't change what is the only dimension we can change is the present not even the future we're not there yet the present present happens to go by really quickly so the future becomes the present before you know it but all we live with and all we live in is the present and it is the only dimension that god can care about and it's the only dimension he judges us for and it's the only dimension we should judge ourselves for is the present it's an amazing gift it means you blew it you walked into the house and you didn't smile you had a tough day so you walked into the house and you threw something down and then you started losing it who left the toys in the middle of the floor and what do you mean dinner's not ready yet and i can't believe that you didn't take care of the dry cleaning like i asked you two four million times and you lose it and you're miserable and you raise your voice and you change the entire energy in the house and you blew it and next week and you'll be so embarrassed when you come to the municier and the teacher asks you have you done your homework and you can say i blew it f i got a big failure blew it here's the amazing thing the moment you realize that you can stop and turn the page say family come gather round i walked in bad mood wrong mood i blew it please can you forgive me could we try this again can we take this from the top can we smile and be happy and joyful sorry let's start again i'll help you clean up the toys and i can't wait whenever dinner's ready it'll be ready and how is everyone's day and you smile the fact that every millisecond becomes a new present is an incredible gift from god it means that the bad millisecond in which we misbehaved became the past really quickly and we can put it behind us if and only if we make changes in the present so the presence the only dimension we live in is the present is the only dimension that we can be in control of and yet we all struggle with it that past just replays so much in our minds lori palatnik if you were here for her class on shabbos she described i don't know how she knows what happens in my house but she described exactly the difference between men and women falling asleep at night man is snoring before his head even hits the pillow my wife claims sometimes not only do i fall asleep while she's talking she claims i sometimes fall asleep while i'm talking in the middle of a sentence it just tapers off and i'm sleeping in the middle of my own sense which i believe very different and she at three o'clock in the morning is still replaying something from earlier that day she's fast forwarding to what we'll be in a week from now she's thinking i said we have to talk about this now really we can't make this decision now we can't control this right now so why would we be talking about this now why we'll get there when we get there we'll decide when we have to or we'll know the result when it comes but not sleeping now will not change anything i could promise you that it will change a lot it'll harm you physically spiritually emotionally it's bad for you it's bad for you so the only dimension we control is the present the present rapidly is changing to the past and the future becomes the president we can turn the page and create a new present now there are things from the past that influence and impact the present if a person went through pain in the past it carries into the present i'm not minimizing that i'm not saying well you could turn the page so just be happy all the time and there is no pain and let it go and you lost someone you love or you lost an enormous amount of money or you went through something that is irreplaceable or irreparable just let it go i'm that the reason those are challenging are not because they were in the past the very reason those are challenging is because they're still in the present the gemara says in conducion a man says hurayat mikudashisli am anasha anitzad gammar so the man who walks out of mcdonald's just ate a cheeseburger just drank a milkshake onion kipper wow i don't know just come up with a scenario with every avera you could think of cell phone right on his cell phone while embezzling money while fine just think of a scenario and then he walks out and he says to a woman with this ring i'm hereby married to you on condition that i'm sad i'm the most righteous person on earth and then they come ask soccer are they married or not married is the condition met or not i would have said are you out of your mind if he said omanashini russia gum where they'd be married he said i'm the most wicked person he fulfills that condition this is a russia he was speaking la shanhara into the cell phone like let's come up with everything it's precious next week mitsura so how could it be you know what the gemara says nicodeshas they're married how are they married he's he still has the crumbs from the cheeseburger his mouth how could they be married and you know what the gemara says the commentary say that that was a moment ago in that very moment when he betrothed when he proposed to her with that condition he radically changed his mindset he transformed his very identity he transformed who he was in a moment the robber bisalavatrik says we have a concept a prelude a precursor to chuva called hirohua which is the determination the decision to do chuva that precedes the act of doing chuva that's what changes us the simple here herchuva the decision i want to be different i'm different the decision i'm different that's it now you're different it's amazing in the present i'm different now you're different it's an amazing thing now you hurt some of the pasty stuff to ask forgiveness why because in the present you owe them an apology in the present you still owe them an apology even if they insulted your wife you still owe them an apology in the present not because of the past but in the present in the present so this is all the yet sahara why are we talking about all this because we're learning about simcha and the biggest obstacle that's holding us back from simcha is regret shame guilt is perseverating and marinating and stewing in the past and not being able to break through to the present and to consciously and mindfully live in the present and say there's still pain from the past that i carry in the present but i'm going to learn how to compartmentalize it i'm going to learn how to have my moments that i cry and grieve but i'm also going to choose to compartmentalize and like the reichenbergs choose to be happy and choose to smile and choose to be out positive and optimistic and to believe in myself and others in a hashem mumila ancient masha karbapalabe in the middle of this footnote where he says sometimes we review and we analyze the past and we regret because the decisions that we made i should have could have would have but don't stop and realize that you are where you were meant to be and hashem got you here and if it weren't through that path it would be through another but you are where you were meant to be and you arrived at this destination that hashem plugged in its coordinates when it comes to the building we could have bought that's a powerful voice but when it comes spiritually it's the shame to the guilt of the regret to the beating ourselves up it's even stronger [Music] and this pain is difficult to push off again don't feel regret don't get stuck turn the page and say all i can do all i can control all i can influence the only dimension i can live in is right now what am i meant to do right now what's next you know it's true in the work also sometimes i said i'm overwhelmed by what was who i should have or could have checked in and called during corona when i could or should have answered that person when they said that thing how i could have dealt with that circumstance or you sit there and you go oh my gosh phone call i don't know what to turn to next and then you have to stop yourself and we'll live life and say okay all i need to know right now is what's the next thing i need to do that's it is it a phone call is it an article is it a share preparation what is the next thing i need to do not the past not overwhelmed by the future but what's the next thing that's it that's the only thing that's a trick towards mindfulness to living a mindful life to live mindfully means to not be scattered and fragmented and overwhelmed but to live with what's next what's next am i doing homework with my child because that's what these half hours meant to be homework otherwise just half an hour but this half hour is homework and then there will be dinner and the meeting and the event and the planning and the decisions that have to be made and the difficult conversation that has to have but right now all there is is home this is what i meant to do right now when i need to do those i'll do those but right now this is where i need to be not only physically but mentally emotionally spiritually this is what i meant to do now what's next what's next what's next that's it president bartlett said what's next that's it that's all there is is what's next that is all there is because you can't turn back the clock and you can't speed up the clock and all we can do is live on the clock in that moment what's next what's next and that's not the pressing that's empowering the fact that all we have is the present should not be depressing it's meant to be and it is i think incredibly empowering i have a new present at every moment how do i want my next present to be what gift do i want to give myself how do i want my next present to be what do i want to do with it who do i want to be in it how do i want to be thought of from it what legacy of the next present do i want to leave that's all that we have don't let that yet burst in it is not an emotion it is a decision it is a choice it doesn't mean that we don't have moments where we're overwhelmed by grief as you know and as you see i'm a crier with the biggest of them you have moments of sadness grief of difficulty and live them and lean into them that's that present when you're at a funeral it'd be inappropriate to be laughing and smiling and skipping and whistling it's not what your job is in that present in that present a shiva call is to be present with the ones grieving and to be with them in that moment but it means having the capacity to compartmentalize and to shift well and here but i'm writing this article and uh and i wore the same black suit to the funeral into the wedding same black suit worked at both i just changed the tie in the car in between i drove right from the cemetery to the wedding rabbi lukstein solzain gezunt which celebrated a major milestone birthday rabbi luxtin torres and smikha the importance and the art of a funeral tie you wonder what we learned smitha wearing a proper tie for a funeral a funeral tie believe it or not was a topic of discussion so i have my finaurial ties and the symphony ties so in the car i changed my tie changing your tie is very easy but changing your mindset is a lot harder how do you do that i sat in my car thinking about that in the parking lot outside the wedding and then it struck me if the raishenbergs could go to the upsharing you can walk into the wedding and all of us in life can in that present choose the present we'll get back to whatever was painful in that past i'm sure we'll make its way back into a new present in the future but every present we have a choice to make what do we want that present to be informed how do we want to feel and believe and be and that's a choice that we make nine o'clock tonight we're going behind the bhima with the great naomi nachman author chef and host of a uh show on the nacho siegel network eventually i'm not from siegel's studio suffered a terrible fire burnt to the ground wishing him well we have a special guest host with me for the interview with naomi naffman i'm not going to tell you who she is other than it's possible she sometimes speak to me at three in the morning i'm related to her by marriage but you don't want to miss at nine o'clock tonight until next time stay happy stay healthy stay holy