The Small Victories | Rabbi Binyomin Weinrib

Imagine walking into a beautiful Siyum. A friend of yours has spent months and months working through a Masechta, finishing the Masechta, and at the end makes a lavish Seuda, inviting his friends and his family and his wife’s there shepping Nachas, his parents are there, his children are there, and everybody is enjoying this beautiful Siyum with meat and wine, enjoying Zemiros, talking about the greatness of how many months he spent finishing this Masechta. And in walks another friend of yours and goes over to the Mesayem, the one who has spent months finishing this Masechta, and says, ‘I don't understand the cause for the party.’ You made this beautiful, lavish Seuda inviting everybody, spending thousands of dollars on this Siyum. At the end of the day, it's one Masechta and there are thousands of blat in Bavli and if you take Bavli and Yerushalmi and Kol Hatorah Kula, what have you done? You haven't even scratched the surface of Kol Hatorah Kula. You've done one small Masechta, 30-40 blat, and you're making this beautiful, lavish Siyum? What's the cause for celebration over this small Masechta that you finished? Now, we all understand that that friend is ultimately the Yetzer Hara. And what that friend is trying to do is to push down that sense of accomplishment that this Mesayem feels over the months of work that he put into finishing this Masechta. But we all know that that Yetzer Hara is not only when it comes to a Siyum, but that Yeter Hara attacks us time and time again, when it comes to the world of Kedusha. We tend to look at the world of Kedusha in black and white terms. The Yetzer Hara tries to convince us that we’re either a Shomer Einayim, or we're not a Shomer Einayim. That we're either successful or we’re a failure. But the truth is that we can be a success today, and right now we can be a success, even if we haven't always been a success, and even if we won't always be successful in the area of Shmiras Einayim. And when we learn to celebrate the small accomplishments that we have in the world of Shmiras Einayim, when we learn that if we're able to walk through the streets for one time, we're able to go on a bus, we're able to take a trip somewhere, we’re able to go into the airport and we're able to watch and guard our eyes for this one trip, then that itself is a cause for celebration. That itself is a reason to make a beautiful, lavish Siyum. Then we'll start feeling success more and more in this area of Shmiras Einayim. And it will move from being one Masechta to another Masechta and ultimately to be able to have a real completion where we'll be able to say about ourselves that we've accomplished and we've conquered vast areas and massive success in this area of Shmiras Einayim. And that's our goal, that when the Yetzer Hara tells us and whispers into our ear, ‘So you've accomplished a little bit, ‘but a little bit is nothing ‘compared to the world of being a Shomer Einayim.’ We need to tell him that a Shomer Einayim is not all or nothing, but being a Shomer Einayim means that right here and right now, when the challenge comes my way, I'm capable of overcoming it and holding myself back, and I'm capable of making a Siyum on this small accomplishment that I've made in this world of Kedusha.