The Real Me | Rabbi Shimon Gruen

There's a pasuk that we say at the end of Shmoneh Esrei, each person has his own pasuk, and the point of it is that when we come up to Shomayim, we should remember our names. Now one may think, Remember my name? That's not something I usually forget. But even when we're here in this world, we tend to forget who we really are. I was talking recently to a yungerman, how he is, how he's doing, and he tells me: I don't daven. I said: You don't daven? Why not? He said: Well, I’m a shaygetz, and a shaygetz doesn't daven. I said: What makes you think you're a shaygetz? Well, there are things that I shouldn't be doing that I do, and if that's the case and that's who I am, then how can I daven? It wasn't a big Chiddush to me to hear this. Unfortunately, very many people deal with what I’ll call an Identity Crisis, not knowing who they really are. I wrote a book, Get Along with Everyone, explaining people's personalities, giving understanding to interpersonal conflict, helping people resolve difficulties and challenges with other people, and I came to realize that so many people who read this book are able to assess properly the people around them, whether it's a spouse or children or workmates, family members, neighbors, and when it comes to themselves, they get it wrong. So many kind, soft, gentle people that are assuming that they're really bad, nasty, selfish people, thinking that they're arrogant, and other people that are actually quite self-absorbed, thinking that they're so selfless and always having in mind other people. It's amazing to see how off somebody could be in understanding who he really is. There's an old story of a Russian Yid, who is traveling from one town to the next, hoping that by one town he'll get onto a train, get to the next city, and he's in a town and it's cold outside and it's nightfall, he can’t go on anymore. He's looking for where to stay. He knocks on the door of a tavern, and he asks: Do you have a place for me to sleep? The owner says: I don't. All the beds are full. He said: You’re sure? You don't have something? Just some straw on the floor, a little mattress? He said: I'll tell you the truth. Just earlier I had one last place and a Russian soldier knocked on the door. He needs where to stay. I couldn't turn down a soldier, so I gave him the place. But now that I think of it, he looked pretty drunk. I'll tell you the truth. You could lay down near him, he probably won't even realize it, and you'll get some sleep. The man was happy. He said: I'll do that, but make sure to wake me up in the morning. If you don't wake me up at 7:00, I might miss the train and I have to travel. He said: No problem. I'll wake you up. Next morning he comes, 7:00, he wakes him up, he's very thankful, and he rushes to the train station. And as he gets up to the train, he sees what he thought was a mirror, it was really a window, and he looks into that mirror and he sees a Russian soldier. And he thinks to himself, אוי וויי ס׳מיר גוט the guy must have woken up the Russian soldier and not me, and if I rush back to the tavern, and wake myself up, I’m going to miss the train. Sounds like a funny story, but this is what happens to all of us. Yetzer Hara is so often Matzliach to get us to not realize who we really are. We have all these doubts. People have good days and they have bad days. People have the good times, and then they have the times when they fall through and do not such good things. And we're all like that. And it's up to us to decide how are we going to identify ourselves? Am I a good person who sometimes does bad things, and I better get myself back on track because I want to be who I really am? Or am I really a bad person, so why am I wasting my time? The Yetzer Hara is sometimes even successful, in getting people to doubt why they're doing something good. I'm in a good mood, I want to do the right thing, I want to be Misgaber on this Nisayon, but maybe I'm only doing it because someone's watching me? Maybe I'm only doing it because I'm feeling bad about myself and I'm just trying to give myself some Chizuk? It's not really me. It's amazing how we can fool ourselves. There's the famous words of the Rambam, who says that when somebody is forced to give a גט, and he says: רוצה אני, it works. You know why? Even though he's being forced, but he really wants to be good. Every Yid wants to be good. and we have to remember this at all times. Instead of seeing ourselves as bad people, who are trying to struggle to sometimes do the right thing, it's important to remember we're really good. And we will remember that no matter how many times we fall, we get back on track, because today I want to be the real me.