Rabbi Yossi Bensoussan - Living with The Eye of Your Creator - (Part 2)

first of all welcome to all the derek guys all right you know they're already uh you know they're already that far out of israel because there was no like like there's no like insane hooting and hollering and there's like uh whatever i'm done college right now i'm not even gonna remind me of israel penske i still have uh i still have my uh my jersey up in my house people still ask about it embarrassingly enough they read the inscriptions on it embarrassing for you guys it makes me look great i was like i know right news okay here we go why in the world did god create us it's probably the most commonly asked question i get in emails usually from teenagers that are like i have this awesome question that you've never heard before why did god create me i'm like next next email i'm not mostly because i just would like to point out if anyone here ever sent me that email it's no offense on you i would just like to point out the silliness of the question right how do i know i have no idea why i never spoke to him i never i have no idea we never conversed over you shifra6623 i i have no idea i have no clue why he i don't know i i think there's too many of us if you're gonna i'm saying if we're solely asking my opinion there's so many worthless just i'm joking no hashem but in my opinion you have to understand something i did just drive through brooklyn so in my mind there's either too many cars too many people or too many people who drive cars i don't know what the answer to that was although it was nice because i was driving lakewood earlier this morning and wow i'm from cleveland ohio i live in cleveland ohio right now i vacation in cleveland ohio it's a weird place to vacation i know but i really live in israel in my mind and i'm gonna be back there soon so i just say i vacation in cleveland and over there when you put into ways where you're going and it says five minutes you're there five minutes sometimes you're there sooner over here it says five minutes and it has like an asterisk on it it's like should take five minutes if half the population of this place disappears it's gonna take you five minutes so so therefore maybe maybe i'm not coming in the right mindset to talk about why we were created but why were we created this question like so many that came before it no one really wants the answer to i'm gonna give you a spoiler alert for life most of the answers to your questions most not much has changed not much has changed eight o'clock um um like most questions that get ants that get asked we don't really want the answers there's an amazing i think i actually might have said this last time that we were here in this exact species this exact time but we're going to say it again anyway because this is mind-blowing to me there was a study done university of pennsylvania where they took people who were um i totally skipped everything in the beginning of this whole thing i said i see ravi i saw ravi was very nervous in the back and now i know why tonight's here is uh it's like nissan man luna kazak brought me here now here we go no we're going to speak about kazakh in a minute that's right that's why i skipped that now um there's a study done university of pennsylvania where they said they took a poll or a study of people who were told hallelujah that they were terminally ill they only had a few weeks to live and it was a misdiagnosis it was an accident and they were called back and said you know we messed up some some guy in the lab was drunk and we messed up and we wrong wrong diagnosis you're going to be fine they took a poll of these people and they found that the most common reaction to being told that they're going to live after being told that they're going to die the most common reaction to being told that they're going to live was not joy was not relief was not a flood of positive emotions the most common reaction was some form or other of depression the question is why they were just told that they're going to live they were just given good news why why would it be that and the answer is we should never know when a person gets told that they're going to pass and they only have a certain amount of times to let time to live all they are all they live eat and breathe is death that's all they know that becomes the core of their being dying becomes how they live when you take that away from them you didn't just take away a fact you didn't just take away some bad news you took away the core of that person and when you take away the core of a person no matter what it is no matter what it is when you take away the core of a person their natural standpoint is not now joy or fulfillment or just mediocrity or or some sort of being no need existence it's depression they're lost so they fall to depression sometimes we live with these massive questions and these questions are based on these even bigger assumptions and if we were to in one fell swoop knock down this tower of assumptions and questions we wouldn't be left with clarity and this is probably the most important thing i'm going to tell you tonight if i were to take away every assumption every question every doubt that you have you will not be left with clarity that's not how life works every single person has ever dated another person in their life for marriage should have said that in the beginning anyone who for marriage is dating another person will forever until they walk down the aisle back the other way still on the way towards the chopa they're still asking this question after they leave that it's just too loud to think so they stop asking is this the right one how do i know but how do i know another awesome question that i get is sometimes it's a guy most of the time this will come from a girl but someone i've never met in my life or maybe met once or twice or answered once one or two questions for will call me or email me and say well how do i know he's the right one i have no idea i don't know him i barely know you i have no idea i have no idea for all i know i'm gonna be like she's like but how do i know david's the right one i'll be like he sounds amazing and then i'm gonna meet them in a supermarket and it's her and a broom with a balloon face on it and she's like this is david you're the reason we're married i didn't know you were a crazy person you didn't send any sort of biography with the email you just asked the question i don't know he could be a stuffed animal for all i know i have no idea what is the problem with that question there's no problem with that question it's a beautiful wonderful question the problem is the assumption that leads you to the question now don't throw anything at me because i know in every school and are yeshiva and every seminary they've taught you different but but we all misunderstand even some of our teachers misunderstand what this really means and i know all that i just realized that the pit i just dug myself into all the questions later are gonna be about this just just forget it okay just trust me on this one point everything else you can ask me about the assumption that we go on there is that there is a right one is that there is only right one right one or two right ones that there that there's a concept of that that either i get this right or i get this wrong that's it those are my two options so now once i and that's a fact so now once i have that fact in front of me oh i'm left with a question i'm left with a really big question how do i know that's the right one i have options one to a thousand you guys wanted there one to 900 yeah i i option one to a thousand of of people that can be potential i saw i was in a house this week i'm about to get myself in trouble here but what better place to get in trouble than in brooklyn right we're right between avenue m and avenue j this is the only thing you can do here so um whoever got that joke by the way so um what was i saying oh yeah so i was in a house this week and there was a stack of papers on the thing and it was like a bunch of pictures of uh of boys like all you know relatively i guess they look the same age and uh like looked like information i didn't see the names or anything look like it just says on and i looked down as a joke i said oh is this the new way we do shidduchim now it's just like it's not even like one one you know resume thing with a guy's picture like you know like like he's being searched out by the fbi it's like a whole list of them just you know and the person in the house is like yeah those are sugarcars amazingly they look like shoes it looks like shoes on amazon it looked exactly it was the same types on everything as amazon and it was just these guys pictures and some information and that's it i don't know if there was ratings there might have been ratings or they rate them from like one to four stars and that's it so when we have that list in front of us and we're like well which one should i choose this isn't an ice cream store might be but i'm saying it's not an ice cream store we don't choose the right one or the wrong one we're always asking the wrong questions because we have the wrong assumptions the assumption that there is a right one we say why does god create why did god create me what's our real question over there what's the purpose of my life what's the wrong assumption to that not that my life has purpose of course your life has purpose what's the wrong assumption there that there is one purpose to my life and by the way it's very specific it's very specific the purpose of my life is not just to help people to help people in this field this demograph this type of people who wear this size shoe that's that's what i'm meant to do and there are certain people that just know they just know they know what they're supposed to do and they're so good at it i'm jealous of them i've never met them but i'm jealous of them which is crazy because i know they don't exist but we're all jealous of things that we know don't exist people with perfect lives people that have enough money people that have enough friends people that have enough talents enough charisma enough confidence those people don't exist no one ever has enough yet we're still jealous of them our question is what's my thing but it's the assumption that's all wrong our assumption over there is wrong what would your life be just think for one minute what would your life be like if you let go of all of those assumptions if you let go of all of the assumptions then i'm supposed to be this i'm supposed to be that i'm supposed to find this i'm supposed to find that how many single people are there that feel worthless i met a girl one time this i couldn't wrap my head around it i remember i was in israel i was actually by my brother ahri's house there on 139 over there his apartment his apartment was a house compared to my apartment that's right because there was two floors to it it was a very big deal anyway so we were in their house and he had someone over and um this girl she was an older single which i still don't know what that means you're single i don't know that there's an age limit to single it's not like you're expiring it i don't know what that means but it she's referred to herself as that was i was like hello my name is older single that was the uh the name tag and she uh she said you know she was saying right right when i walked in the topics in these types of living rooms when you walk in too early from shul and the host isn't there yet and the guys aren't going to be there for another two hours and have to sit there waiting is is always going to be about how horrific the shadow scene is and how horrible shakhanim are and how guys are a bunch of this that and the others and then the one guy who's there is also single i'm this is how my this is why i don't do i don't i'm i'm a complete idiot when it comes to it i work and i'm like hey they're boom [Music] and then both of them say their opinion i'm like i think i'm gonna eat at home today we have cereal i'm good i'm gonna i'm gonna back out slowly from this whole thing and and and and i do it all the time my wife always looks at me she's like this this is a true story one of my boys from yason was uh was over at my house and one of my neighbors you guys remember i don't remember this rock and my neighbors live across as israeli as you can get i don't know that there's if in on in the dictionary like if you looked up if you youtube israeli you're going to see mr mizrahi over there spinning guarding him at you going so i can even be hebrew it's whatever level of hebrew that is he's amazing i love him but he he is what he is and his daughter came in and i turned to my wife and i'm like i'm like what do you think about ellie and for the life of me i'll never remember her name but ellie and her and she's looking at me she's like i just because it's at a point now that i honestly think there might be something wrong with you i'm like what's the matter i think it's perfect she's like let me list you just a couple of she's 14 he's 23. she only speaks hebrew he can't speak anything but very american english he said a million times he's only living in america there's no do i need to keep going by the way is it is it enough yet the fact that they can't communicate with each other is that is that going to be enough for you not to even think about this i'm like i don't know i still see it i don't know why i got a premonition and so i walk in and this girl is sitting over there and she says the woman sending over the lady is sitting over there i'm not sure i don't know but she's sitting there and she says she's talking about it how you know and and my sister-in-law and this other girl that was there was talking to her and there it was it was very sad it really was i was i felt really bad for her that that and when my brother came in he made some joke about doctors or something like that and the girl said oh here we go the doctor jokes and i'm like why would you be a fan is your father a doctor or something she gave me the death stare and i knew right then i made the big mistake i'm like oh no she's like i know i know i know what you're gonna say just give me a minute to think of something say back okay and then you can say what you're going to say because everyone knows what you're going to she's like i'm a doctor i'm like oh wow i'm like like a doctor of like history or like she's like i'm a meta i'm an emergency room doctor i'm like wow an emergency room doctor she's like yes and she went to this whole thing she wrote this medical trash it was whole and listening to this lady she started a company she said this and then and she said really i'm not here because uh that got to take off from doctor because i started this medical company and i had to fly in because we're getting things from israel and i'm looking at this lady and i'm like you're amazing you're crazy successful and she's like yeah so i'm like nope no so no so why would you want to get married just forget that i just i'm curious right now why would you want some ruining it for you coming in with his whole uh you know supper ready like be quiet like why are you doing that to yourself and she's like well what do you mean i want to go like i understand i'm not but how little this woman thought of herself because because what she was supposed to be the story she had to tell herself which was that i'm supposed to be married know and voided every other accomplishment she had it was all unimportant she said with her own mouth she said yeah but what's it all worth i don't have a husband like what's it all worth are you kidding me i wish i was able to say half those things that you can say i wish i was able to understand half the things you said it's it's amazing we have these these expectations that ruin our lives and it's never enough i think the last time i was here i also uh i wow there's something in this room by the way there's a lot of vulnerability that i i gain in this room so last time i was here i told everyone everyone that i've been to therapy you know what out once upon a time great guy his name shall not amazing amazing guy i love telling people i went to therapy because um now we can stop worrying about it because that's it now it's okay it's fine some guy we never met before got up in front of the camera and said it now it's fine it's okay it's okay all right brookwoods always says you know in shidduchim when when they're like oh this guy went to therapy um you know we don't know he's been to therapy robert what's always says like would you prefer the guy who didn't go to therapy because he's a lot worse off can guarantee you right now right so for perfectionism which isn't what you think it is it doesn't mean that like i really like windex that's not that's not what perfectionism is it's not that i like things clean or right perfectionism is that that things will never be enough for you you you you can if we're gonna use cleanliness as a thing you'll clean something and then you have to clean the next and then the next and the next thing and then once you're done cleaning everything you're like i have to get rid of all this stuff because it's all not good i need the next thing because of that your mind never stops it could dry it was ruining my life it could drive you insane but we all have this to a little bit of a degree this concept this idea that we tell ourselves in order to be accepted in order to be loved in order to be i need this this this and that why did god create me what are we really asking what's the purpose of me being here if you were to ask a parent it would be the most awkward dumb question you will ever bring up to another human being by the way probably maybe okay i could think of okay i can think of a lot others fine forget it but it'll be it'll be on a list somewhere you go over imagine you have a friend that just had a baby right you have a friend that just had a baby you go over and you're like by the way just a question why did you have kids like i'm sorry i'm just one why why would you do that and what do you mean why would i do that because you don't seem stable no it's like no i'm saying like what does that question really mean why would you ask her that why would you ask him that it's a very offensive question to ask because basically what you're saying is is that we have enough with you more of you is a bad thing for the rest of us please why did you consult with the rest of us before this decision it's a really bad idea no one would ever say that yet we asked hashem hashem why did you have us why did you make me imagine a kid going over to his mother like why did you have me be like in faint like that's the most heart-wrenching question if i were in a room and a kid asked his mother by the way just why did you have me i'm like someone call child protective services someone calls someone the ghostbusters anybody just to help over here i don't know what to do yo we asked hashem why why did you do this and hashem says this is how i give love no it's not no it's not this world is for suffering and pain and suffering and bad no it's not no it's not i put you here to love you i'll put you here to give to you if you want to know the route do i can't i made a very big mistake i have atd i i i have 80s i don't stay on one topic but i bring it back at the end don't worry the i made a mistake i used to write articles in um in major magazine and i took a hiatus which means i stopped writing them i think that's what that means i think people think hiatus means that you come back to it at some point which it probably does but because i'm a coward i just wrote i'm taking a hiatus and then ignored when they emailed me but no they they they were very gracious about it actually but one of the things i was struggling with in in in writing articles was that there were mostly stories about these guys no about about you know people that i've worked with and people that and i felt people were missing the point in the story the point was to every single article was the same point just brought differently the point was is that i don't know what i'm doing but i'm confident in not knowing what i'm doing so what that means is is that all i can do is bring out from them the game plan to solve or to get through what it is that they need to get through to work through what they need to work through but they always have the answers to their problems they always have the answers to their situations every single person always has the key to where they need to go and if all i'm gonna do is sit there and suggest things it's like when you come home and you're starving and your mother just starts listing foods or if you're a parent and your kid comes home and you just start listing foods i do this all the time i violate this rule all the time i can't come something like cheerios toast and they're like i maybe i'm just in a bad mood like ah you're hungry cheerios does why because i much prefer to be cheerios toast eggs that i know how to do if you're in a bad mood i have no idea what to do about that so when so people kept calling me as if i had this like guru thing that i'm able to magically figure out read you and figure out what your what what your solution is going to be and that wasn't the point of them i don't know how that got brought out maybe it's because i wrote it that way i don't know but and and it made me very uncomfortable it also made me very angry sometimes to be honest with you to be completely honest because people will call me and be like all i need is five minutes just look at me tell me what i should do and i'm gonna leave i'm like no that's not how life works right that's not how anything works and they're like oh you're just holding back on me what do you want money like no yeah no wait no what are we talking about hang on a second i don't even remember what the conversation started as so in one of those articles i made a very big mistake and i uh i said that it was by way of a joke because i make jokes and sometimes people can't tell the difference between when i'm making a joke and when i'm not making a joke so i said half seriously half jokingly that there's there's uh that someone came up to me about shidduchim i don't know why i'm picking up they'll come so much tonight but someone came with me about him and i said there's a few things i don't get involved in i don't get involved with i don't i try not getting involved with child bias or divorce or anything along these lines the reason being is that i'm uh i i don't know what i'm doing in those areas i just have no idea like i explained before i'm very bad with that type of thing i just don't know what i'm doing there that's it so um also i'm in most of the times it's like a fender bender right you know there might not be any damage at the end but it's still not a good day you know i'm it's not like i i can't operate like that so or i thought i couldn't and i said this publicly i wrote this in an article and i i assume hashem read my article because he was like oh really so you took over running the world now and you decided what you do and don't do well i have your phone number and he does because he gave it out to so many people that week and all i was doing for the next three months was only getting phone calls about shidduchim divorce and challenges it's like i'm like did no one read what i wrote and and no one did none of them did they're like and anyone who called usually they say i don't know if you deal with this but and then they'll say what the thing is anyone who called on these things just started talking they're like so we're getting divorced i'm like okay you don't sound like my wife i don't know what's going on right now i'm not okay with that if you are just talking weird i don't know but and what was my what was the thing in my head the expectation in my head was i can call the shots over here i i so now for the past year i've been dealing a lot with charlemagne and so welcome so one of the things that i found so unbelievably black and white just blatant in my face about issues in these definitely a marital but definitely but even in friends even in siblings even parents specifically parent-to-child issues but definitely husband and wife issues are on par with parent-to-child issue in this sense one of the biggest catalysts of issues of misunderstandings of pain of hatred even between them was one thing and if we took away this one thing it was beautiful i've seen people change like change where i saw them first and i was like there is no way these people are ever getting through this let's just take that kid out of that house put that parent somewhere i don't know i don't know what to do here they're getting divorced for sure they hate each other one thing expectations expectations is the cancer is the cancer of life of living of joy of happiness expectations is one of the worst things you could possibly have yes even expectations of yourself is one of the worst things we can have let me explain what that means so what happens when you write oh here it is so expectations will always equal a certain amount of disappointment always that disappointment starts to fester so what does that mean let's say you have a married couple is the easiest one to use but we'll use a uh but i don't like using that so we're gonna use a we're gonna make it more difficult for white and we're gonna use a parent to a child get ready get your neck muscles ready because if you're a child you're gonna be doing this a lot right now it's gonna be happening a lot so a parent thinks that a child should be doing x y and z they should be going to school they should be respectful they should clean up after themselves and the list goes on and on and on and on and when they don't they should get married at a certain age you realize how like we throw ourselves into the god roll over here it's like i'm not married by 23. what's wrong with me i was supposed to be married right when i got home from seminary i'm a guy i'm not married by 25 26 i'm like what what what don't they like about i don't understand who who put that there who gave you who tied you with that who told you that and how much more awesome is your life without that thought why do you have that i can't tell you after she-room how many old smarty ladies come up to me and say to me rabbi she know for this to get married i'm like why i think i understand the question why why why why is she not what's the matter i don't know she thought that she said no she did but like crying like broken like she's give her a minute i don't know how many expectations we have so you have a child to a parent i do this to my kids all the time i walk in and there's toys everywhere there's this on the floor that on the ceiling i literally walked into my house about a month ago and my one of my kids i love him was on top of the refrigerator laying down on his back hopefully we're not even there yet we're not even at the laying on his back and with a silver sharpie on what he called a sharpie in the rented house laying on his back and he's drawing just frowning faces like the son of sam just walked into my house like a serial killer was there i walk in and the first thing i see on one of the walls is a frowny face i'm like someone murdered my family [Music] i might as well go in and i walk in i walk in and i follow the frowny faces into the kitchen and he's just laying there drawing fanny faces and i'm like hey buddy i'm not gonna say which one it was right now hey buddy what's uh what's up he's like i hate you i'm like okay i guess it's one of those days and i didn't say hey buddy what's up i walked and i said yes sryal estrado who i don't have a child with that name i said what are you doing you know not to draw on the walls and he looked me right in the eye and he goes you never said not to draw on the walls i'm like i must have said that at some point he's like nope like never like never like logic no doesn't you don't know not to draw on walls really and then my wife came in and that obviously that part of the conversation happened i said you know not to join the walls and he says you never said not to drone the walls my wife came in and my wife loves doing this to me and she's right she was like he has a point i'm like thank you thank you i wish he drawing on the ceiling and which he would have actually said yeah he was probably drawing the wall at that moment because he would have said to me well i'm drawing on the ceiling so it's okay i'm not drawing on a wall but it was my expectation that got me so upset over there kids shouldn't draw on walls kids shouldn't break things no you see when i say it out loud everyone's like um nope all kids do are drawing walls and break things actually so when they do that how are we upset at them that's their function that's the only value they have is that if you don't like someone you send your kids to their house and they break stuff that's like the only gain you have until they're older and you get too old to function and then they take care of you there's also they say some cute stuff all right i'm saying i'm not saying that i like my kids but what what that's what kids do and if we think it's bad when we do it to kids when we do it to adults it's borderline insane behavior we walk up to a person we say something or we come in and they're kind and we're like okay i'm going to solve this like no one wants you to solve anything it's one of the big things with men and women are like a man's always trying to solve something woman's always trying to experience it or feel it at the moment and they're like you hate me because you're trying to get me to stop failing and he's like i love you because i'm trying to solve your problems both of them are speaking a relative amount of logic so what are they really missing the expectation the expectation that of course you should love the fact that i'm trying to solve your problem the expectation that you should be understanding and just sit here and watch me cry i still don't get it i'm not gonna lie so fully it's not fully formulated here how but our expectations of each other you should have performed this way you should have done this you should make this you should do this a friend of mine was once telling me my cousin he's hilarious he's a very funny guy and he was saying to me how uh he um he he didn't close the garage door he was coming into the house and his wife always says close the garage door and then close the garage door it's a button like you push the button coming in and close the garage the garage door and in order to close the garage you have to bring every like these kids leave like everything over there so you have to bring everything in and then close the garage so he brought everything into the garage but he didn't close it it came and the next morning his wife was like you know why didn't you close the garage you know what why wouldn't you close the garage i don't understand and he's like it's not like i brought everything inside walked in and was like no and then there's like he's like i brought everything in clearly i either missed the button or pushed it and didn't realize it was too drunk i don't know i have no idea i don't remember why i didn't what was the expectation problem over there you should have done that imagine your life without that try to think of one argument try to think of one disappointment you can have in your life if you didn't have any expectations now the opposite because i see it in every i see it in everyone's eyes right now the opposite of expectations it's not oh i'm just gonna walk around and hope that no one murders me that's not that's not the opposite of it the opposite of expectations is not being a careless fool that's not the opposite of expectations you're ready because it's the truth bomb coming the opposite of expectations is acceptance you accept the person as they are you accept them fully as they are so i should accept a person who's punching me in the face okay so that's one person you got me minus that one person now everyone else that doesn't punch you in the face every day except them let's start with the people that are so easy to accept and we'll work our way up to the person that punches you in the face we always go to these extremes to try to protect a value system that doesn't make sense acceptance is the key to every single real relationship but the acceptance of what and this is where it gets to be key what we're doing the the we don't have time to go through everything but what we were the the key to where we are the key to what we're trying to do over here is trying to live with the eye of god what does that mean when hashem looks at us what does he see because our our um narrative for hashem is very off we only believe hashem created a certain amount of creation and the rest of it he didn't do and obviously it's not true but this is our belief system hashem created me but he didn't create me to make mistakes he didn't create me to fail he didn't create me to mess up that's why i hate myself and i mess up no no that's not true that's not true the greatest musician in the world was really bad at one point the greatest prodigy the greatest artist was really bad at one point they had to be they had to be or then there's no talent involved there's no there's nothing to be impressed with if a child just was born and started painting beautiful pictures it would be amazing to see but no one would be impressed with the person there's nothing impressive about that it's a supernatural it's an unbelievable sight but there's nothing impressive about it if we were to view ourselves the way hashem views us how does hashem see us he just sees us as light now you can have a small light and you can have a really big light a small light still lights and as it grows it gets bigger and it lights more things it's not bad because right now it's small a light's not bad because it flickers it doesn't make it bad it doesn't make it evil it's still a light you can't debate the light that's still there and that light shines past everything in hashem's eyes hashem designed us to be exactly us who we are with all of our faults with everything around us if we were to look at our lives through the light and through the eyes of god we don't see problems all we can possibly see our opportunities we won't have strengths and weaknesses we're going to have strengths and opportunities there is no such thing as as a weakness it's just something that's an opportunity for me to become greater with that's all it is but the yetzara has us convinced to define ourselves through that i was telling someone today we define ourselves through what we don't through what through that one thing we lack so so if we're not married we define ourselves through that being single you know what you know what marriage solves there's only one thing marriage solves you're not single that's the whole thing it's the whole kitten caboodle nothing else it literally does nothing else the only thing that gives you that now i'm not trying to promote people not getting married by the way i'm trying to mow people being themselves because the problem is is that when you go into a marriage thinking that i found the one you think that now all that loneliness abandonment nights alone crying pain hurt all that is disappeared now because i found the one and it's a lie you didn't find the one that's gonna solve all your problems you found the one you you met to fight with for the rest of your life now sometimes fight alongside sometimes fight with you met the one that you more than anything want to get to know not get to change not get to fix not get to be different to accept to love to appreciate how do we work on this acceptance how does our view change from expectations to acceptance which are the opposite ends of this our views change by honoring people's journeys by realizing every single person i don't care who you are every single person is on a journey every single person and this is our problem expectations deal with either the past that shouldn't have happened to me or the future this should happen to me and the fact that that thing did happen to me in the present destroys me and the fact that that thing hasn't happened yet or has the odds of not happening destroys me in the present now my present becomes my tomorrow and that tomorrow becomes that tomorrow and i just continue in the cycle whereas if i were to say i'm going to accept my past as it is i don't imagine or wish it to be any different it stunk it was painful it was hurtful it was horrible but i accept it as that i don't wish or hope that i could go back and change any of it even the mess-ups that i did that was me paying failure is a currency in the land of success it's how we pay for things if you don't fail you don't earn then you don't have the right to talk if you don't fail and fail failure is finite you can only fail x amount of times before you're successful and success is infinite once you accomplish something you accomplished it doesn't mean you're never going to struggle with it again but you know you did it already now the ability to do it again is infinitely easier failure is finite success is infinite we pay for success with failure so we're going to fail again and again and again and again and that's fine so i accept all those failures i own them it's like pointing at a million dollar bank account being like nah that's not mine it's not mine that one's not mine i don't i don't because right now i don't want to be a millionaire so that that one's not mine you know you might change your you might change your opinion tomorrow imagine every time you got into the smallest fight with a friend of yours you just excommunicated them forever be the most lonely person on earth i they did that thing yeah but we're still friends i'm saying you can't take away all of our history together you can't take away i have all this failure of all this pain i have all these things behind me and i'm not willing to own it i'm not willing to adopt it for my own because it is mine instead i just sit there every single day wanting it to be different and driving myself crazy that's that's me accepting my past my future my future is just that no one knew i was gonna do that i didn't know i was gonna do that i have no idea i have no clue what the future is i have no clue all i know is is right now i'm really happy i did that [Music] that's it there is no future there's only my now my journey that i'm on right now you want to know the difference between a mature person and an immature person i don't know if any of you everyone here looks relatively young except for me and daddy we're we're just tired i know i know i know but well everyone here looks relatively young so maybe you don't know what i'm talking about that he definitely knows what i'm talking about maybe okay maybe a few of us fine no one ever had to go up to their bungalow colony or to camp or to the mountains sitting backwards in our station wagon it doesn't look like anyone here ever experienced that but that i see not even know what backwards in the station wagon is well backwards in the station wagon is is there is there used to be in the cars for minivans before minivans with captain shares and recliners in them from my kids and dvd players and who knows what else there was a different thing what it was was is that you knew how much your parents liked you versus your siblings based on what part of the car you were put in because there was a trunk this isn't made up and in the trunk there was like this cardboard thing that you lift up and you would turn to the two remaining and you'd be like well let's get in and then walk to the front there was no car seats sometimes there weren't seat belts back there and you would sit there on top of luggage or under it depending again if your older brother forgot to put in his luggage so he just walks by the open trunk and shoves it right in your face and now you're holding that and for the next four hours that's your life the vinyl seats will fuse to your legs and you will never get up again this is what you believe if you're lucky they will pass you back the one can of coke that they brought with them after everyone on it and then sent it to you there's no vents back there so zero air conditioning but all the windows are closed because there's air conditioning in the front and you would just sit back they're trying not to either faint or vomit because if you did if you did they would put a plastic bag over your head for the rest of the ride and that made it even more uncomfortable there was no there was no although i'm pretty sure the uh the reason why there are warnings on plastic bags now that this is not a toys because some kid in the back of a station wagon on the way up to the mountains got tied up and they're like oh we didn't know that's the so he must have been playing with it the kid's an idiot to begin with it's so i totally forgot why i was bringing up this right a journey if you want to know if you want to know the difference between an adult and a kid is that nowadays my children sit in our minivan in these big comfortable chairs if it it reeks in our minivan but that's their fault to begin with and they they get served things and they get to see it's amazing it's amazing they have their own climate control in there we're living in the future people it's amazing so they're still gonna say four minutes into this thing how long are we gonna be there guys it's an eight-hour drive i'm telling you right now i don't mind leaving one of you one somewhere so it's an eight-hour drive where eight hours that's the answer to your question eight hours so a child does not have the concept of enjoy your journey the immature mind can only think because there are it's i'm not making fun of kids hairs it's an underdeveloped brain they can't control that they can't value the here and now it's only when are we going to get there why did we leave that's all the child mind can handle and we all deal with this child mind it's either because we listen to adults too much or whatever the case but we're always looking forward to when is this gonna be that when am i gonna get there if you have a job the odds are you know what i'm talking about if you're in college the odds are you know what i'm talking about you don't enjoy being there you just want to get to the what if you enjoyed it what if you enjoyed the subjects you were studying if you actually took a moment to try to enjoy them i know it sounds insane i would never be able to do it but the fact that what if you're trying what if the job you have now you're right is not the job you want but it is the one that you have what if you enjoyed it what if you did that for yourself what if you actually enjoyed these things where would you be where would your life be a bad eye this isn't the eye in here that you're talking about it's a person's view yet sahara the part of us that wants to destroy us and hatred of things hatred of people hatred of creations removes a person from this world why why these three things these are all our views i in we know when we ever use the term i and we're always talking about the the the foresight or or backside of something so it's either something that we've seen is something that we're looking at in the future yet sahara the itara's game is to play on us like this feel bad about what you did feel despair for the future don't live in the right now i don't want you thinking about right now at all the izahara hates it when we live in the now removes a person from this world why because you're not in this world anymore you're either in the world that was or you're in the world that's gonna be but you're not here you're not here anymore when we view the world through god's eyes god exists above time and space he just exists why is it so hard for us to wrap our head around something existing outside of time and space because we cannot fathom a world that isn't back or forth we can't fathom just being here right now the negative of expectation the opposite of expectation is acceptance of the journey a child cannot appreciate a journey a comfortable journey why because their minds aren't built for that but adults we have to do that we have to appreciate and accept each other's journey it's not bad that if because if a trip is supposed to take eight hours and i end up making it take six somehow that's awesome unless you don't appreciate journeys because then even though it took sex it's still stunk it's horrible stupid but if you appreciated the journey number one you could get stuck someone doesn't really matter how long it takes number two i made that journey shorter it's great so it doesn't really matter at the end the journey is everything we'll never be happy till we get there no enjoy the journey honor the journey i'm not bad if i walk up a flight of steps i'm not bad if i'm not at the top yet i'm still going up i'm still getting there that's acceptance of a journey when we see a person struggling we see a person do something wrong that's part of their journey we're just going to end by by discussing this in one deeper level and it might seem impossible to do but it's not people around us it's so difficult to accept their journeys someone asked me today i was discussing this idea with someone today and he said yeah but how do we accept ex accept a this is what he is his line how do we accept the journey of a jerk someone is being a jerk to us how do we accept them well it's simple they're a jerk there's nothing to me why does a jerk affect us so much why does a bad person affect us so much very simple apologize for my language very simple because we're offended by him but his job is to be that i'm not going to be it's him it's what he does that's what he does that's who he is if that person goes around talking about other people a guy pulled off a great line in my shabba's table got jordan gross jordan jordan gross i love him he's one of my neighbors he's awesome yet sitting at my shava's table and and someone was saying jordan's a balchuva and someone walked in and said something dumb like i saw this crazy baltruva guy and said something at some story story was not that great and and my wife turned to jordan afterwards and she said you know does it offend you when someone says that and jordan without without and if you know him this is how he is just in life without a second's hesitation authorities like no it says a lot more about him than it does about me feel bad for him he wasn't seeing it as a line this is legitimately how he felt didn't even think about it he said something bad about something that says more about him than about me who how can you even twist the ball trooper to be a bad thing like how does that even make sense it says more about him than it does about me acceptance doesn't mean i like the person doesn't mean i approve of what they're doing it means i accept what they're going through i accept them as that which means i don't expect them to be any different why does this help us so deeply and so much if i walk up the last example if i walk up to an apple tree and i say to this apple tree i would like an orange the apple tree is going to say you're out of luck here's an apple idiot right and you're like no no i want an orange and apple she's like yeah can you juggle and he throws a bunch of apples at us now at a certain point the apple tree might not be that nice and how he's explaining to us the fact that he can't give us an orange but the fact is the apple tree can't give us anything but an orange it's my fault for standing there asking an apple tree for an orange now if you would walk up to that person be like you can't get an orange from this tree it's an apple tree then we're like but i desperately need an orange or i'm gonna die like yep okay weird but fine so go find an orange tree this tree can't no no i'm getting an orange out of this tree like it can't give it to you it's an apple tree the people in our lives are what they are for whatever the reason it's not your business they are who they are they're apple trees and if you're allergic to apples and they're throwing apples at you all day buy an umbrella but don't expect them to stop being an apple tree they're an apple tree they can't do anything else once we accept the fact that person is that way you have to realize too and they're on a journey you have to realize two awesome things number one when they change the way they are because inevitably their life is gonna stink for being apple trees when everyone wants oranges when their life changes you're the first person they're gonna change about and through they're gonna be nice if they're mean people they're gonna be nicer to you first because you accepted them when they were mean that's number one number two i accept the fact that they change too because they're on a journey so if they're if they're not nice people they're eventually going to be nice and i'll accept i'll allow it because i know that people are on a journey they're going from point a to point b and it doesn't matter where point a started and it doesn't matter where point b ends what matters is right here right now right here and right now so that person is still in my life eventually they're going to be amazing i'm sure of it but in this part of their journey they're like a little child that comes home hungry when he says oh i hate you you know he doesn't mean that he's a little kid that's what he is that's what they do they say silly things do you think that changes when someone becomes apparent that changes when something comes your friend then it changes when someone gets no they also say silly stupid things sometimes that's it they're humans i accept them i accept what they say i accept them as they are and if i could do that i don't have a need for expectations of things anymore i abandon them i accept them i accept their journey i accept myself accept my journey and real love of another human being is accepting them as their journey is not as i want their journey to be okay we'll go on to questions if anyone has any questions i'm going to assume oh you have them oh i don't have any questions oh okay no you look like you were walking up with that like there was a i could ask a question just before we open the floor to questions i do want to mention that the events are always free and um i try to keep it that way i try to sponsor everything out of pocket or through family and friends and sponsors just like potential ones that are sitting here so if anybody can afford to give any kind of donations it only goes towards the future events to make more events just like these and hopefully just as good um i don't know about you but i learned something tonight so without further ado if anybody has any questions we'll take them right now right i'm going to actually give everyone one second to think of questions because i totally forgot first of all a big thank you to kazakh um they really you guys i was i was there today i had a very hard day today i was at khazak today and it was it's always the worst day when i go to kazakh rabbi it i'm not going to go through all the names it's it's so bad going there because you walk in and you just gave a speech you just gave a class you just helped someone got off the phone i'm like oh i'm feeling really good about myself then i go in and this guy's like i just took a thousand kids from public school and put them in your shoes what did you do today i'm like your journey and then i just leave i can't i i'm broke i'm a broken they're unbelievable what they do over there if anyone knows anybody that wants to give a million dollars now let me finish now i'm joking if anyone knows anyone that has a child in public school that has a a a relative in public school that has a and that wants to change that that wants to actually get the funding the ability the the the poll and power to actually have that changed email their information to hazak at psty which stands for public school to yeshiva i think i got that right this time kazakh.org p-s-t-y kazakh.org and guys the daily dose is still going right we're on we're trying to get another 500 subscribers to the daily dose by the end of this series coming out so where the daily dose is from torah anytime they send out one um like clip of torah every single day is why our lives are awesome because we have other people doing all of our stuff for us myself included i found out that to some poor person i i don't know who they are but so when i say poor i mean i feel bad for them like not monetarily poor some poor person in israel whose job it is to listen to not only mine but my brother ari all of our speeches and cut them up into minutes you have to lose your mind at some point of that i sent them an email thanking them and telling them to maybe put in some of my bitter men or someone in the middle just to just to add some conducion that i like and um the daily dose can be so these these uh these minutes or moments are cut up you get them every single day it's an unbelievable way to start your day to to listen to that morning's dose uh the number for the daily dose is four two 929-355-4260 eight twenty times daily dose it's uh on whatsapp you just uh text them add me and they'll or whatsapp them add me and they'll add you to it and you'll get this awesome clip every single day it's free you got this awesome clip every single day i don't know how they would charge for that anyway you get this awesome clip every single day you can also sponsor them and so on and so forth any questions oh thank god oh man that's her panscott always ruined my day sonny no i don't i don't care i'm not god um with the with the daily daily dose uh do they have any form of social media suddenly listen to me i'm gonna tell you what i told you in camp okay okay i you're smarter than i am and i don't know the answers to these types of questions okay i have no idea sonny it's me i i don't even know where they would yeah they did they do don't ask me where i have no idea i don't know i don't know i don't know but if they don't sunny i know who i'm sending them oh he's a family uh for those of us from somewhat of a immigrant style household a what an immigrant style household where like good is the really good enough kind of mindset how do you draw the line between pushing yourself like being hard on yourself but at the same time being easy right so so first of all it's adorable that you think immigrants are like that americans are like that also they're just passive-aggressive about it the immigrant parents are just more honest like you're fat you are fat you have to lose this for the weight but the american people are just like you're beautiful by the way i just think that maybe it's time for surgery like and it's just a different more passive aggressive uh type of um um you know something along those lines um that that having been said um so it's one that's a myth it's a myth it's a myth i'll i'll i'll explain to you we actually said it last night if it was the last night's share i'll just do it really quick it's a myth this uh idea that if i'm hard on myself or or if i demand for myself i'm going to accomplish um you know you ever felt really bad or really down on yourself like you ever felt like i'm a loser i don't know i don't know how did you ever go from that point to being like that's it my life is gonna be and then shoot up it's never once happened it's just never once happened the odds are when you're feeling that way you actually mess up another five or six things when you're pushing yourself in that way being honest with yourself as they call it you actually go mess up about five or six other things because now you're in a horrible mood so now you go and and you make a bad decision about about eight or ten other things when you forgive yourself or allow yourself self-compassion self-compassion is not it's all it's all good that's not what it is it's that i didn't mess up but through that mess up i'm gonna earn the next thing right the famous dale carnegie thing this guy lost the company a million dollars and he goes over to the ceo of the company and he gives him attends his resignation gives him his resignation and the owner of the company is like you out of your mind so he's like you're going to keep me you're so thoughtful that's amazing he's like i'm going to keep you it's not because i'm thoughtful because i just spent a million dollars educating you you're never going to make that mistake again now i'm going to send you to to the firm down the block to never mess them up you joking it cost me a fortune i'm not letting you go you're an idiot but i'm not letting you go right it's it's the same concept i earned right now because i just messed up i now if i translate that i'm never because what do i do when i beat myself up about it i'm not saying i'm never going to do it again i'm saying this is what i do i'm a loser so of course i'm going to mess up it's a self-fulfilling prophecy for the next time i mess up i'm always this is just a cycle in my life i mess up whereas if i say that was my learning that was my time this is something i had to do in order to grow what do i do the next time so my expectation was never to mess up and i mess up that's just always going to happen now because my expectation hasn't changed i'm always going to feel bad about messing up whereas if my acceptance of my mess up is the reality then first of all i go through life without the fear of messing up i also learn from my mess up and i'll continue further so you're right we got brainwashed as kids that to walk on eggshells and to but it's just it's something we need to change in our minds uh we we have to change that we have to change that expectation with acceptance it's it's a much more beautiful way to live i remember and if it's it's been tried and tested and at a certain point you feel like all right you know i'm gonna try a different method like you're saying at what point do you feel like that method might not work out as well and you've got some trust something else so like i'm guessing the question is if you have to choose between taking things kind of easy or hard and there's no kind of like middle that you can kind of set along because it doesn't work that way like at least yourself like which way do you go right so let me give you let me give you an expectation that people like to say right they give they use this expectation that if you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life it's it's probably one of the bigger lies we're ever told if you love what you do you're gonna work so hard at it you're not gonna be able to wake up in the morning you're so tired you're not gonna you're not gonna have time to for stupidity you're gonna go home you're gonna want to crash you're so tired if you love what you do you work so hard the reason i'm saying this is because there's no not work or work it's not taking it easy acceptance is not taking it easy go accept your life accept those around you tell me that that's easy you want to lash out sometimes you're like that's not acceptance if i were accepting this person as they are i won't lash out at them i'm going to truly try to understand who they are i don't appreciate how they're talking i don't like how they're saying i don't know i don't con condone it in any way but i accept them we have to change that that that language around so there's no failing at that there's no way to fail that it's it's it's a sure-fire weight it's not easy or hard your life is still going to be hard you're just going to enjoy the hardship as opposed to suffer through it easy just means i'm ignoring the heart sorry i thought someone sang went up okay good oh yeah okay so i'm in the gym where i am in my journey now is kind of what you're talking about the acceptance why i don't feel like i'm in a place where i'm understanding that now especially after lecture um but my husband is not so i feel like how do i i mean of course if he's on his journey he's supposed to gather himself but how do i help them get their sword on the same page did that make sense see what he said you want to get him there i mean i don't want to force him there but but you kind of do if you were able to no really something that's what why i asked this question you said when someone is the way that they are you have to that this is how they are this is who they are open an umbrella yeah it was a bad example but yeah sure no it's mine when someone's the way they are that's just how they are but for my husband he'll be more like obsessed he'll get i'm i don't get offended by the way this person is but my husband gets affected by the way that person is so you have to be accepting of both huh you're accepting of both right you're accepting of who he is also in that situation yeah so when he's upset at that person i accept that these things drive you crazy i totally understand that yeah i totally understand if you're just listening to him no man in the history of mankind has ever been upset because his wife just listened to him never once happened are you married to a broom the the the right adam when she listened to the nakash right what happened over there she said to nakash hashem said we can't touch the tree that was a lie that wasn't true she never said that you can't eat from it so nakash knew this do pushed her up against the tree he's like ah you didn't die everything's fine you touch the tree and everything's okay so you could probably eat from it too and then lava took from the tree and ate it now what happened over there but she knew she was lying she's not lying but she knew it wasn't she knew she couldn't eat from the tree she knew touching it was whatever so what happened over there when we force a person to stand their ground even when they realize they're wrong they're gonna keep standing their ground because it's not their ground that they're protecting it's their ego now when you're dealing with a husband and wife whatever however true that is in regular interpersonal relationships it's times a thousand what you want to do is is accept him as he is all angry and upset and like i see this this really really hurts i'm so sorry i know i know i know i get it i get i can really hear where you're coming from that that would really upset you i get it that's really really hard that's really difficult i'm really sad that's it wasn't okay you're right it wasn't okay what he said it wasn't okay what that person did it wasn't now you're thinking oh but then i'm i'm giving him a stamp of approval that that person's bad and now he's gonna no you're not you know what you're actually doing in in in reality what you're doing because you're now speaking for him by saying now he's going to think no he's not you know he's really going to think you know she really actually understands me and she's on my side over here i forget that guy she thinks i'm right it's all mattered forget that guy and the next time that guy upsets him he's not gonna even get that angry anymore because he knows you're with him he knows you're on his side you have his back that guy here any yeah oh no we opened the floodgates here we go what is the fine line acceptance and validating especially whenever it's like with your children or with people who are younger than you like i could be like talking to like you know my nephew or something and he's doing something and i totally accept him for what he is and what he's doing but like you don't want that for them you don't want bad for them you don't want them to like fall into anything yes so again no no no i i hear you i hear what you're saying it's a good question but but it falls into the same category we believe we're in control of that when we're not he's on a journey or one of the main points i think maybe we didn't say is one of the main points of a journey is the fact that i can't affect it i can't i can't i'm telling you right now i've worked with i can't tell you how many people in my life i've really not made that big of a difference i'm not saying this to be an enough uh honestly the dedication that i gave to it i'm sure i'm gonna get scared for but when i lay down my head on a pillow at night i cannot think of a single person who i actively change their life and if i can it's really creepy but that's very different because they're not for example no no even a parent even a parent i'm telling you right even a parent so i have a child right who's not doing what i want him to do right let's say you have a kid who um and it's the same story right so yeah the kid parent will call me and be like how can i get my kid to go to school he doesn't go to school how old is he he's nine right i'm forcing him to go he doesn't want to go he's 12. he's 13 he's 15. i don't care right he's forcing him to go he's not going what am i supposed to do the answer's always the same thing leave him alone accept the fact that he doesn't go but that he's never going to go to show let me tell you something i know for a fact i don't know a single 30 year old on earth that goes to shul because he was forced to at 15. never met the guy i know plenty of 30 year olds who go to school because in his own time his parents allowed and really what are they worried about they're not worried about the 15 year old going to show that's not what they're worried about they're worried that when he's 30 is not going to go so if you want to make sure he's not going to go at 30 tell him force him to go at 15. in reality it's a your your how often we meet our destinies on the road to avoid them it's a lie from kung fu panda thank you very much now now when when we try to tell this kid and force him into that mold that way but that's not his mold we're trying to live his journey for him he needs to get to school on his own he needs to get there what does he need from his parents the belief the belief of acceptance of him the belief that he matters he's going to want to start going ashore when he matters the belief that it's not just because we want everyone to see you going to school and and and so self-confidence self-esteem those things he's getting from his parents but not by telling him you have to come around no all my friends are gonna free me he knows why you're dragging him to show it's not because of that and and if you think in the mental health field in the in the education field people aren't like this they're desperate for the client to do well they're desperate for the kid to do better so they're going to fudge and fake it and you have these kids walking out of especially i'm sorry especially jewish schools not knowing a thing because we just passed him to the next grade he didn't have to work hard i didn't have to work hard and he keeps going up keeps going up finally his poor kid leaves base measures gets married he has zero life skill zero ability to to what he called he comes out he's like where's the jew that's gonna give me a job that's it he's just looking for the guy who's gonna give him the job which uncle of mine is doing the best i'll work for him until i compete with him and then our families won't speak anymore it's like it's like a circle of life with us we're trying to protect them you're not protecting anyone what can we do for people very simple allow them to experience life children are resilient they'll fall they'll fail but they'll grow they don't want to know that you're going to be there to catch them they want to know that after they fall you're going to be there to comfort them there's a very big difference there because then when you when you when someone dies all the kid is saying now no one's there to catch me anymore i've never fallen it's the scariest thing in the world no one's there to catch me now as opposed to when i fall my mother is always there to to to comfort me afterwards she doesn't even have to be here to do that anymore she could be gone and still be comforting him she lives in there now she lives in there now it doesn't stop if we if we try to cuddle them through or force them too quickly along their journey to go from point a to point b what ends up happening is they become stagnant where they are so the kid who was going off to derek and his father kept killing him about about just do a little bit you know how many parents i've dealt with that are just like i just want him to just put on his phone every day that's it i just want to make sure he put on his phone every day and when this kid's shooting heroin five months later he's like i just want him to be a person that's all i want is to be able to sleep at night not thinking he's going to die i had a drug counselor one time told me a word story i know that exists not doors i know but it's a this uh this parent was always constantly saying to him you know i just want this i just want this i just want this and finally like he couldn't do it anymore his kid had like pink hair and the face looked like a dart board with piercings and and he got a tattoo or whatever he's like that's it can't deal he's like what am i supposed to do walk in my house and see this in front of my face that's what he used to say to the to the therapist or the kid sure enough unfortunately the kid uh overdosed and didn't make it and they were sitting in the house it was during the shiva and everyone's crying and everyone's upset and everyone's obviously understandably distraught and this guy was saying he was crying to one of the uncles the father was crying to one of the uncles and he said what i would give to see him walk through that front door my friend this drug counselor said to me he's like i'm sorry i've been holding this since then obviously i didn't say anything to the father but i left the house crying my eyes out because you're too late who do you want to walk through that front door now the kid that you wanted him to be the kid passed away when he was like 19 20. so you want a 19 20 year old yeshiva buffer with a hat and jacket and everything to walk through that front door that's what you want that's who you miss because that guy doesn't exist you never even knew him that kid doesn't exist who are you thinking of in your mind when you say i want him to walk through that door one more time who are you thinking of you're thinking of a kid with pink hair and a face that looks like a dartboard that's what you're thinking of that's who you're thinking of if you would have only accepted the fact that that's who he is and that's who you want to walk through your front door three years ago he never would have gotten there never would have gotten the print never would have gotten any of it he wouldn't have needed it he wouldn't have needed any of it it would have been just a blip in his journey and he would have gotten past it and grown from it but when we stop when we when we insist on pushing people further along their journey we're pulling them back on their journey then they can never move to the next step it's impossible for them to move the next step can't tell you how many divorces i hear about because somebody put their foot down i have to put my i've done enough i've given it enough i have to now put my foot down that's your problem you think you gave in over here allowing a person to live their life is not called giving in it's called love it's a real love and it goes the other way also a child to a parent you're right some of us have immigrant parents someone has these they're not the same as us they didn't grow up the same as us we need to understand that when they see us they see a bunch of spoiled kids and they're right my father came up from morocco when he was 13 with nobody he's supposed to understand my white person problems tools understand that my minivan is too late what is how is he gonna understand that my minivan sunroof is broken and i'm upset about it and my gym closed too early this morning how is he supposed to understand what i'm talking about it's not possible we need to accept that without the expectation of he should understand i'm a son no no we shouldn't no he shouldn't but a good father doesn't exist doesn't exist you know who does exist your father your mother get along with them first then then lecture everyone on what a good parent is and and parents the same way a good son would a good son doesn't exist but the one you have does so be excited i've met your mother i don't know she would so agree over that thing so accept the one that you have be excited about the one that comes in and you'll never need another one you'll never want or pine for another one any other questions since you've entered the dating and marriage realm this past year yeah so so this question would go to the single people in the room which i think is with plenty of us they can benefit from this question sorry i i couldn't even not at all who like who would play out the scenario for example like they would say oh she's a great girl but this one thing or that one thing like we shouldn't have the expectation that they should be a certain way that we envision them to be right yeah so i'm going to say my my advice here is very juvenile so take it or leave it i'm not saying i'm right i really met i'm saying what i'm about to say on this i have no idea if i'm right or not the way i see it the way i see it is that you have your specific things that you're strict about and you got to know yourself right what are your right guys i i don't know maybe it's the same way with girls i don't know i i'm not one so i have no idea but um i know i know i know with me like every one of my roommates um you know in yeshiva and what he called like whatever was their like red line they all married that like i had one roommate an israeli guy it was like i can i'm just one thing i'm not marrying an english girl i can't deal with that accent it drives me crazy not only did i marry an english girl it's like she has like the most cockneyest accent ever she's like oh my gosh i don't know what she's saying ever it's amazing it's a and and the same it's the same i don't want a person that this that and the other so ravager always used to say that if you have like too much of a thing i don't want this he's like even if you didn't marry that person unfortunately for them their character traits are gonna morph into that because that's how hashem made the world you're never gonna work on yourself more than when you get married and then you're never gonna work on yourself more than that than when you have children so so they're gonna end up adopting those character traits without even knowing it because those were your that now so you you want to decide that that's what you're going to have to work on now so but you but everyone has to know what they want and don't want after that it's i've seen i've seen the most mismatched human beings have the greatest marriages so if someone says and remember we're also we're talking about right why do you know rebecca what's always says one of the biggest shim in the world in the whole torah he believes is the fact that we believe adam two people show up to a court and say something we believe them he's like that's crazy what are we trusting these guys for and we're like well it's because there's two of them he's like and it's like there's a really rabbit burkwoods moment because you're like i don't know i went through my whole life just believing it he's like you you know how much of a story is in every human being's head how much their past experiences come in he's like it's a massive criticism we believe two human beings to say something they're you you think their opinions aren't involved in what there's of course they are see the turret says is that a vesden are trained interrogators so they tear these guys apart no one is ever able to last through beznin's interrogation but but it's still to him it's still a kiddish right so we go to a shotgun we go to a what he called and and we say and they say yeah he's nice he's nice and we're like well i'm not going to marry nice that's not going to happen if if the boxes check right your your your general life goals your general you know i want to live in this way i want to have this type of perfect if if like let's say you have a um a a guy or a i guess yeah yeah let's say you have a guy picking on the girls do much tonight unless you have a guy who uh is like i very much want to be business-minded but i'm only going to work half a day i want to learn in the mornings and this is my plan this is what i would like to do for forever i'm not changing it i don't want to change it i want to i want to have a very solid morning seder either or one seder morning saturday afternoon and i want to have one solid seder and be doing every single day and what i call and having i'm not saying this is the best way to do it or not do it i'm just saying this is his requirements let's say and i'm going to have a job that what he calls and i want to live in you know wherever and you have a girl who comes and says i only want to live in china and um i i want a guy who um is going to be home every single night i don't care if he has daffy on me i don't care if he has where to go he can never go learn he can never go i want a guy who specifically doesn't put on the phone everybody right you're gonna be like okay so the fact that both of you like comic books doesn't really matter right because clearly you don't right to certain core values you don't share right certain very big core values you don't share right so let's say a guy is like uh i want zero filtered internet in my house and big screen tvs in every single room and you have a girl who's like my children are never gonna see a movie their whole life clearly your value systems are just we base things as far as this goes we base it off of a value system as long as your value systems match up then it then it's a matter of of you you know that's a matter of view some lady came up to me on a program somewhere and started yelling at me she's like how come you don't speak about next picks i'm like i don't i have no idea i still don't know but i know it's a sugar thing and i'm like i don't i have no idea it was like next to picks i'm like okay first of all i didn't decide to not nix pics so i don't know how i'm at fault here that you're yelling at me i i don't care about it i i not that i don't care about i don't know i have no idea i never looked into it i didn't study it i don't know they say there's big red on them that are against pictures for pictures i have no clue i don't know right i have no idea my point is is that let's say you have one person who is like very into pictures of one person very not right their odds are their opinions are not going to be lining up so you know you find out what you can and you go with it but but to put too much weight on what other people have said about the person personally i just you know when i accept the guide to yoshi obviously it's very different but when i accept the guy to yeshiva and you know israel have said horrible things about him i'm never like i forget i'm not going to meet the kid we have zoom i don't even have to go out there right i'm going to meet him i mean i've see i found them sorry i found people lying so many times i'm not talking about what you hear from like the shotgun i'm talking about when you actually go into the date and you see that yeah she might be great or he might be great but they're like nobody nobody checks out everything on your on your checklist right there's always some things that don't add up or are missing everyone has their own journeys in their life and different experiences that add them up to be who they are at that point so like i guess the the main concern would be is like obviously everything is a core value based system in marriage but to what extent should we value other things like random opinions right so we obviously we date as jews as religious jews we date with a certain formality to it but we can't negate the other side there if you have extreme interest in the other person or a valid interest in the other person that's enough to say yes to to go further take your time with it people are going to try to rush you be like my wife i try to i try to propose on a fifth date and she said no she said you can keep going or you could go home i don't care i proposed like another two times it became a thing i just started doing on dates i'm like hey she's like nope mentally she said yeah or she just got tired i don't know i wanted to but um but i'm just saying that like you know it's a good question it there's a lot of personality involved in the question also so like a person who wants on the base level of things it has to be that you were interested in that person and you want to connect to that person so as far as the first things go you tick the boxes so you know like certain basics are in order right then you go out and you see i have an interest i have a vetted interest in this person no one is ever ticking every single box so my vetted interest has officially made it that i stopped being interested in that thing because i'm interested in this person hear what i'm saying so there's going to be a lot to that there's me a lot to that i don't mean to sorry yeah um how is it not depressing to walk around with no expectations of anybody because you're walking around with acceptance you're not walking around void when you say how is it not depressing to walk around without expectations you're viewing it as not expectations and void you're replacing expectations with what actually should be there which is acceptance of other people which is translates as love of other people you're just you're not condoning that action right you're accepting that that person again should a child hit a parent no no one's going to say yes do we understand when a child a little child hits a parent yeah we accept that we're not like oh like he hits the parent like he hit me first did you see it you saw him hit me he hit me right we're not no one's going to think that you're right that parent i don't think is acceptable we're not going to accept that parent but i'm just saying like why because it's a that person is a child in that way we all have an inner child and we all all act like children at some point with certain things to have acceptance why acceptance does two things it spurs them to grow to go past it right the way to push a person actually further into their journey is to accept their journey as it is right now right once we're in acceptance of where we are we can actually move further but if you don't accept where you are you can never move further so that that's number one number two is that acceptance of of that person is not condoning what they're doing right my my guys my uh my students not my students in shiva they're they're all sweet kids great kids uh a client that i'm working with or anyone else right um if they're mahalo shops if they're already going they're telling me about it they did this horrible thing they're telling me about it and i'm like wow okay wow right they don't think that i'm sitting there being like that's awesome you should really pursue that keep going there see how that ends up that's sounds great right they don't think i'm condoning what their the negative behavior that they're involved in they just know i accept them even though they're involved in negative behavior how do they know the difference because sometimes when when i mean i get that question a lot and and and i don't really think about i don't i don't understand the question because when you're in the role of a therapist let's say or right or whatever it is then then it's it's clear i don't approve of you doing drugs you know it's you're shooting out i think if you're in the role of anyone on earth that's clear no one approves it you don't approve of you doing it not you know someone else very badly right right and they're they're talking to you about it right right so you are understanding them but how are you not validating you're validating their behavior how is that different than approving of their pain so first of all in a situation like that right if they're telling you about the negative that they're doing to someone else yeah so if they're if they're if they're telling you something negative that they're doing to someone else the odds are they're telling you that for a reason they don't think it's a good thing unless they've just decided so so that they might do that they might do and you can even show acceptance around that but when we justify it still leads us to the same place we don't think it's good we just think it's justified we don't think it's a positive thing to do we would love not to do it we just know we have a reason to do it so we get them from reasons being the uh uh justification being the reason we do something to uh uh honor esteem whatever being the reasons we do things right there's there's still a separate journey there but as far as the easiest the easiest way to use this as an example and the easiest way to understand this would be apparent to a child right if a parent doesn't discipline the child on the thing that they're doing wrong how will the child know it's wrong the answer is the child knows it's wrong right they don't think the father or parent is okay with that our first level of to a child is earning acceptance is earning respect from them so once i accept them even though they did something wrong and kids know this that's why they they'll uh you know you'll you'll yell at a kid or do something they'll cry or be upset for five minutes and then come right back when i i have one of my children if i scold him or yell at him about something or whatever he like sister is like just looking at me hold you and then i just pick him up and hold him right i'm the one that just yelled what is he doing because he's not upset at me he's not upset at that it's it's it's either scares it whatever we're going to go into the whole depth over there but but he knows i accept him it's not it's not a matter of that's why he wants to comfort from me there's no the acceptance is what leads them to know i did something wrong i'm still accepted even though i do something wrong and let me take this one step further because this is super important one of the main reasons why children don't open up about abuse is because they don't they feel they won't be accepted they feel they'll be blamed for it because they've never got acceptance if we bomb them with acceptance they'll open up about everything they'll know when they did something wrong and they'll talk to you about it they'll tell you i did this and this and this and i feel really bad about it i feel really bad i did this in this thing i said le shahar i said whatever i feel bad about it right it's why we have the concept of truva we have the concept of we don't define a child by or anyone really by the negative that they do right everyone always says i saw that person's true colors no you saw them in their worst moment for a minute like everything else in their life now fell apart everything good that person ever did it's a it's a modern day media trick that we use that like the media will find one piece of dirt on someone that's it whatever else that person has ever done in their life is null and void right now he messed up once look he messed up once we have pictures of it like yeah and so did i and so does everyone else we have to normalize that as opposed to the fear of of ever being found out our children walk around with more fear of being found out than more love of acceptance so now now when i and so let's say uh my kid comes home right and he really doesn't know if he did anything wrong right he comes home and he says oh um there was a kid in my class today who came in and his pants didn't fit i'm i said joke oh hey whatever and everyone left right he doesn't even think he did anything wrong right it's not a nice thing to do he doesn't think you did anything wrong right so how would i show acceptance over there well first of all it's a great joke right that is it's a good line second of all sonic i know you know there's something not right over there what do you think happened over there that that that that shouldn't have happened it's like i made him feel that immediately the kid will come out with it it's easier as a parent though huh meaning it's almost easy to do that not easy but if you have the knowledge of how to do it as a parent you can do that but in a lot of other relationships and so a negated therapist communicated parent we could go down the list siblings even more so basically it's they know just by kind of contextually yeah no one thinks it's a you know we pass consuela i hate to take up so much time with possums um if uh if you have a person who's uh not shamashabas right and so we always have the question can they touch wine can they this and that so you have a kid who went off to there and smoked cigarettes on shabbos right or vapes because we're in 2021 on shabbos and he uh we there is a place i'm not saying we're passing this way i'm not a plastic but there is a place to say that will still allow him to touch wine so allow him to why because he's not actually a and shops if he if his rebbe was walking by he'd hide the cigarette he's sitting there saying oh it's fine i've smoked one shot this is fine he'll even tell me he doesn't but when i walk by him he's going to hide the cigarette why he knows it's wrong he doesn't think it's right when a kid yells at a parent gives me like if i don't do anything he's never gonna know that's wrong oh no no he knows it's wrong if you don't do anything if you don't do anything about it you let it simmer down and talk calmly to him he feels accepted even though he did something wrong which is a tremendously high level right and wrong kids learn very young don't hit share don't lie don't be mean and a couple others tell mommy when you have to go to the bathroom there's a few others right other than those and by the way everything falls under those categories in some like degree there's very little tweaking we need to do after that acceptance and things like that are so much higher it's so much higher it's so much higher on the priority list i'm saying yeah when dealing with like difficult people how do you show that line between you're giving up on someone and you're accepting them for who you are so so what you're talking about more than acceptance is uh is is really um boundaries um are a little more on that topic um which we're not really talking about but i'll just say for a second the way boundaries work is that boundaries aren't you can't do this boundaries are it's better to do this right uh so let's say um you know someone says they my uh they want my kid to um uh watch a movie or a better thing is like uh you know our kids want to go to 7-eleven right they want to ride their bikes to 7-eleven right so i'll say um i don't know if that's age-appropriate for them to riding by themselves to age to 7-eleven but i don't mind going to pick up 7-eleven and they can ride around the park right as opposed to i don't think that's age-appropriate right that's not that's that's setting a boundary but it's not a doable boundary right because i'm not providing anything else i'm not active over here to so when we're dealing with difficult people it's the same thing right if you i have to say this my kids all the time yelling at us slam the door i have a daughter who's like 40. no like 17 right she's not 17 but she acts like she's 17. she'll she'll slam the door and be like that's how it sounds to me and then she slams the door right so i'll say to her right i'm not going to say to her you can't talk to me like that eliana if you want to talk to papa about this we speak this way or we could say this you could just come over to me and say let's talk are you gonna right she's never gonna do that right but it's teaching her that you know this is this is that uh that line so um when you're dealing with a difficult person it's usually best especially if they're blow a person it depends on the difficulty they're a blow person you accept them as they are in that moment and you wait till later to have that conversation again acceptance is not being allowed to walk all over you acceptance is i accept that this is how this person is i don't expect them to be any different i understand that they can't be any different than they are this is how they are but that doesn't mean that i need to be hurt by this i'm going to leave i don't need to be hurt by this but i accept them as they are and i'll say that to them i accept that this is how you communicate right now i get it you're upset i get it i want to wait till later to talk right a person can't stay yelling at you when you say that to him or most people i'm saying yeah it was go for it what are you keeping me yeah just to get your attention yeah you're adorable whose head is that i know it's happening yeah um ready elaborate a little bit on something no earlier in the speech when the issue people have been looking for the one the one one one one is that implying that you'll never know who the one isn't married or is that that's implied that's implying that you don't need to know who the one is in order to be married you need to be dedicated to that marriage huh is there more than one it doesn't matter you're dealing with the person in front of you see it's it's another concept of not living in the now this one's in front of you can you right now with this one in front of you build a life that you love what are you thinking about all the other people that are out there who are they they're not here they're not you're making people up yeah we have these ideas like we expectations yeah these p this one this person is right in front of me that's why you're making a sound like this person's right in front of me this person's right in front of me is this person the one that i want to stay doing this with for forever it's that simple not forever but i'm saying is this the one that in this moment i could do this with now you have to think about the future i'm not i'm i'm not saying that that's why you have your checklist that could happen with multiple people yes so there's more than one my point is is that there isn't because in this moment you're only sitting across from one i'm not saying that when you get married i think oh there's eight other people there do you think that there's a switch that goes off when you get married magically that says that all those are all the sudden not an option because i know a lot of people that that switch didn't get turned off for i don't even mean in like infidelity or anything like that i mean that they keep thinking well if i was with that one they would be like this and if i was with that one they would be like this i'm not very excited i don't know but i'm assuming from a healthy marriage i know there's no regret once you've met me once you get married i love this person i'm not ready marrying them there's regret sorry what are you saying is that it's not regret it's that sure there is of course of course what does that mean it's not regret but is there is there can a person in a healthy marriage ever be like oh my gosh did i marry the right person of course people say that the fact that they feel that that it's like the most worst thing in the world to say leads to shame and makes them believe that it's true and then leads to bad things whereas if they could just feel that way and be like in this moment i'm feeling like oh my god did i marry the right person hang on a second oh yeah i was crazy about her last week that's the truth yeah oh no she's having a bad day there it is there it is you never thought like i want to kill myself just me okay fine no i'm saying like you never thought like oh that's it i i just i'm gonna lose my mind you're like i'm just having a bad day i'm having a bad day we're allowed to have a bad day we're not allowed to have a bad marriage day we're not allowed to go over to someone and be like my marriage right now is insane we're like why i'm like we're just fighting all day like really all day like yeah it's pretty good i'm going for a year now real strong you know it's it it's a matter of of like again it's an expectation that that i should you know everyone always says like i totally get that there's no such thing as a marriage without fighting there's no such thing as a marriage without disagreements and then they get into a disagreement they're like i married the wrong person what you just said about the hey everyone there's always going to be disagreements like not like this i didn't know she was going to hate my mother like yeah what do you think a disagreement is yeah yeah her my sister aren't gonna be best friends i don't know what's happening here her father is crazy your daughter-in-law has never called me once to say that i just wanna it's never happened no it's not whatever it's like it's all this that's what it is so if your head is always out it should be this way it should be that way and it would have been that way with that one it would have been that way with that one then of course you're just going to be putting this into a cycle while you're dating even while you're dating because relax so much that's like asking if there's more than one in the sense that you're able to relax with that okay if i don't be so straight exactly you don't need to follow the exact guidelines technically yes yeah the odds are is that there is more than one that you could technically have married the question is is that once you marry a person or once you're dating them seriously what's the difference because it's all going to matter on what you're giving into this marriage what you're putting in it's not going to matter who it is that you're giving it to aside from to you obviously but when going by that opinion that theoretically you could work out with multiple people how does a coverage sparkle decide who you end up with he doesn't you do you have bakira and you decide how long you're going to be with that person you decide how much you're going to dedicate yourself to that person you're going to decide how much of your ego you're going to let go in order to be with that person and that person is going to do all those same things obviously we're dealing with and i hate to say this because people jumped at us so quickly obviously we're dealing with everything outside of like extreme mental health issues 1500 people watching right now we're like oh thank god because my ex-wife was insane like maybe yeah maybe no i you know i'm not uh no no she got locked up like okay all right all right she went to a psychologist that's what happened she went for therapy and she's insane okay i've heard people say things like this so you know i'm not one to say one way or the other i'm not here to judge anyone on their own specific cases i'm just saying that like yeah people in good marriages have sacrificed their ego as sacrificed some of their own dreams have sacrificed a lot of things in order to be connected in that way because the key to having great children is to have a great marriage and the key to having a great life is to be able to accept all those around you in in the most beautiful way you possibly can so the people who dedicate themselves to that and that becomes priority even if what you're accepting again even if what you're accepting is is difficult to accept and seems like you're validating but these are all just reasons that you want to lash out at the person for being the way that they are and not meeting your expectations of them but once we say that really what the problem is is that they're not meeting your expectations it's a lot more it's a lot easier to stomach it then you're like oh all right it's just my ego just my expectation of what they were that what they should have been what was i basing that off of nothing i was basing that off of how i would like to present my life to other people usually right you know how many fights between husbands and wife happen at a shabbos table in front of other people not the fight doesn't happen there but it's because of that job still in front of other people she disrespected me he said this about me right i want i want my wife in front of other people to be so singing my praises i want my husband in front of other people to be doting on me all the time and they and they don't meet that expectation so we get really really really upset they get angry at them we say oh you don't respect me we define it but when did we when if we think about it for one second when did that start because when she acted that way in private you really didn't care you even thought it was funny and cute so when did it start it started when she offended your ego in front of someone else so my expectation was that she would make me look good why did i need that why did i come up with that that's not from a healthy place and the same thing the other way on both sides negation of expectations will always lead to positive places presence of expectations will always lead to us being falling short being i came up with a word i don't remember right now but the presence of expectations will always lead to us not getting to anywhere good basically