What the Rav said:
Rabbi Menachem Mendel from Vitebsk says that all the bad thoughts and arrogance that a person has comes from not being happy with the way he serves Hashem.
We need to rejoice over the fact that we know the shape of a Hebrew letter. There are people who never learned even the shape of the letters.
If a person is able to open his mouth and say a few letters, then he needs to be happy with this, to be happy that Hashem gave him the knowledge and understanding to say a bracha or a prayer.
But, people aren’t satisfied with this, they want big, wonderful things.
We need to be happy with our lot, also in relation to Torah and Mitzvot, whether abundant or few. We need to be very happy that we merited to be a Jew.
The starting point is to be happy like the most simple person who rejoices over Hashem.
That’s not the case if a person goes around all day long thinking ‘what I’m doing is no good’ and he doesn’t enjoy his simple actions, and he’s not happy with his lot. Then, he’s pushed away from everything.
My thoughts:
In Rabbi Nachman’s well known lesson called Azamra (Likutei Moharan 1:182), Rabbenu tells us of the importance of looking for the good points in every Jew.
But, what sometimes gets overlooked, is that Rabbenu also tells us of the importance of looking for the good points in ourselves too.
The good points are our connection to Hashem. They’re usually small and often go unnoticed – by others and by ourselves – unless we look for them.
They’re the small mitzvahs that we do. A bracha here, a kind word there.
In a world full of confusion, distraction and the hiddenness of Hashem, we need to focus in on these small, good points that we merit to do.
They will draw us back to our source, and connect us back to Hashem.
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