I Already Have Everything | Rabbi Naftali Horowitz

Guarding our eyes is not only about looking at impure sights. It also entails refraining from looking at things that rob us of our happiness. The Gemara asks, Where do we find Haman mentioned in the Torah? And the Gemara answers, The words in the beginning of the Torah, When HaKadosh Baruch Hu asks Adam and Chava, Did you perhaps eat from the tree that I forbade you to eat from? Asks the Vilna Gaon: What is the connection? We find by the story of Haman that he basically had everything. He had wealth, he had power, and he had family. Yet we find the words in the Megillah where he says to his wife and his advisors, None of this is worth anything to me. Why? Because there's one Jewish Rabbi who refuses to bow to me, and until I have that, I have absolutely nothing. You can only imagine how glorious it was to be in Gan Eden. Yet the serpent comes to Chava and says, You have absolutely nothing. You think you have something, but you don't. Look around. Do you see that tree over there? You see how beautiful it is? Well, if you don't have that, then you don't have anything at all. And with that, he enticed Chava to eat. The entire marketing industry is built on this tactic of the Satan. To make you feel lacking and unhappy by showing you something that you don't yet have and never even thought you needed. As an example, I'm driving in my car and I notice a billboard. I have a perfectly good working phone in my pocket. And a moment after looking at that billboard, my phone, which was perfectly fine a minute ago, now feels like the rotary phone that I grew up with. Why? Because it's lacking 5G and it doesn't have three cameras. This is true in every aspect of our life. The car we drive, the suit we wear, and the shoes on our feet. There's always going to be something better that's going to be shown from us. The Chinuch tells us that part of the commandment of is not to look at things that make us needy and wanting and feeling lacking. So as it turns out, taking control over what we look at and don't look at will not only make us holier people, it will make us much happier people.