The Hidden Root of the Mountain

In 1855, Sir George Ary, the royal astronomer of Britain, opened a letter from surveyors working in India near the Himalayas. They reported an illogical result. When they measured the gravitational field of the giant mountains, they obtained values much lower than expected. The mountains physically exerted less pull than physics predicted. How could this be? The Himalayas are the largest mass on the face of the Earth. There should have been an immense gravitational pool there, but the numbers said the opposite. Ary sat in his office in London, calculated, and suddenly realized something that changed geology forever. The mountains do not sit on the ground. They float in it like an iceberg in the sea. Ary wrote, "The state of the earth's crust can be compared to a raft of logs floating on water. If we see one log whose upper surface floats much higher than the others, we will know that its lower surface lies deeper in the water. He proved that every mountain we see hides beneath it a route seven times larger than the visible part. The Himalayas do not rise only 9 km high. They continue downward to a depth of 70 km. The higher the mountain, the deeper its route. Without the route, the mountain would immediately collapse under its own weight. Friends, this law is the story of our lives. We want the height, recognition, success, influence, status. We see people who have come a long way and say, "I want that too." And we try to build height without building roots, without inner work, without humility, without the hours that no one sees. And then we wonder why everything collapses, why our words don't get through, why the little bit of success doesn't last. Thousands of years before Erie, the Torah taught us the law of the soul. In the book of Proverbs, it is written, "Before destruction, the heart is haughty, and before honor comes humility." Listen to the precision. King Solomon establishes a law of nature. Before any true honor, humility must come first. Without the hidden root of humility, the visible height of honor will collapse. And in ethics of the fathers, it is written, "Be exceedingly humble in spirit." Humility is not just a nice trait. It is the crust that holds up the mountain. That is why all the giants known to Judaism had a deep root. Moses our teacher was the most humble of all men. And Abraham said, "I am but dust and ashes." The more a person grows spiritually, the deeper the root becomes. Without the root, there is no mountain. So the next time we try to be seen more, to achieve more, to prove more, let's pause. Let's remember the Irish. Let's remember that the hidden route is the mountain. Let's not work on what everyone sees. Let's work on what no one sees. And there greatness will be built.