What the Rav said:
The king said to his son (from Rabbi Nachman’s stories), if you will be happy when they throw you down from kingship, then you should know that I will also be happy.
But, if you will become sad, said the king to his son, nonetheless I will remain happy. I will always be happy. I’m not participating in your sadness.
Why not?
We don’t participate in sadness. Suffering, maybe yes. A broken heart, a person crying… But, not sadness.
Why are you sad? What happened?
I can join together with you… if you didn’t receive your salary, I can pray for you…
But, not sadness. There’s no such thing as to fall into sadness.
The king says, I myself will never be sad. There’s no such thing. Whatever comes to pass, whatever happens in the world, I will never become sad. There’s no such thing!
Whatever comes to pass, whatever happens in the world, I will never become sad. There’s no such thing!
My thoughts:
The king is never sad.
He joins together with us in our suffering, when we’re broken-hearted.
But, not when we’re sad.
There’s an important, if subtle, difference between the two.
Suffering is real. You don’t have money, you hurt your hand, your kid can’t find a shidduch.
Sadness isn’t. Sadness is a ‘dimayon’ – an imagination, it’s a construct that I’ve made for myself. I’m now deciding that ‘things’ aren’t right, that ‘there’s no point’, that ‘the world (ie G-d) is bad’, G-d forbid.
Sadness isn’t real. We create it. It comes from the dark-side (Rabbenu calls sadness ‘the bite of the Snake’). That’s why Hashem can’t participate in our sadness.