silentbattle wrote on 13 Dec 2010 20:25:


i think you have it right there. focus on how much good you have in your life. you went on an amazing journey, turning your life around, and now you have an impressive distance from the past, and you are now married to a great wife.

probably the best way to feel it is by doing it. identify to yourself the thoughts that go through your mind, when you feel yourself worrying about something. say to yourself, i will not worry about this, i will do something about it if i can but i will not worry about it. i trust Hashem. He brought me this far and i can trust Him to keep on seeing me through things.

eye - that was beautiful!

you ARE lucky eye. kids are awesome, they're such a blessing.

I was reading over your thread. I always enjoy reading (and hearing) your pieces of wisdom. Yeah, as we discussed so many times one needs to focus on what we have accomplished and how hashem does for us so much good all the time. B"h today was great, some hard patches, but generally good. I'm now lying down, on my way to sleep and really feeling happy that another great day went by. 

I recently heard from Rabbi Viener that part of our problem is that we've bought into to the modern notion of instant gratification. If we don't get happiness on a constant basis then we are "unhappy". There is phrase "yiddische nachas" and that's when we raise children that follow in the path of Hashem. That is true happiness. And it takes a while to get there with a lot of work, effort, struggle and sometimes even pain. SB KOT.

Ur-a-Jew: That is definitely true. But I'm proposing that for a lot of us, we turn to instant gratification (and to an extreme degree), because we learned early on not to expect to be happy in the normal sense. So we desperately reach out for whatever pleasure we can grab, quick, because we suspect that any happiness available is going to be out of stock soon.

And we're so, so wrong. There is so much happiness out there, we only just have to open our eyes and learn to see it on a regular basis.

LM - great to hear from you, and thank you for dropping by! Glad to hear that you had a great day.

ZS - thank you for the advice, I'm going to try working on it.

SB: You make very insightful points; I think many of us are just starting to see (or admit) the truth in this department. Could I try a little rephrasing, though? For me, it's not so much that I feel the world will NEVER give me the genuine pleasure I seek (when I retreat into a fake pleasure of se*ual involvements of any type). It's rather that I'm in that moment not getting it. So the choice is between living without it or giving it to myself. To some degree, then, it feels like a degree of self-esteem to grab it wherever (the pleasure, I mean...) rather than live in a state of lack.

Waiting on HKB'H to provide what I desperately seem to want can seem a little silly sometimes when I've got the tools right in my own hand (I apologize for innuendo). But we all know that His ways can be very complex. Short-term frustration for long-term d'veikus. We all know which one we SHOULD pick, but even so....

i'm in middle of reading 'holy woman' right now (...don't make fun) and one of the most profound things i've read so far is when Chaya Sara Kramer got confused when the author tried to ask her about when she 'relaxed' etch.
basically what Rebbetzin Kramer felt is that who says she deserves pleasure in this world'?

often we forgot that this Oilom is only a Pruzdor. pleasure is not 'owed' to us here, not for nothing. we don't 'deserve to feel good' or to have anything, quite frankly. as R' Stefansky (a big mechanech in toronto and my mother's principal) used to say 'a Yid doesnt' have rights, only responisibities'

sucks to hear or think about but yeah, it's kind of true. this life isn't supposed to be a nice enjoyable relaxing vacation. i have no 'right to feel good and get pleasure'

He may be right, but a person can still be happy - and is expected to be happy, in fact (see the consequences of yackov avinu allowing the years of trouble to take their toll on him).

I would ask how you define "feeling good." If you mean the right to expect a fancy car and expensive vacations, that's true. If you mean feeling satisfied and happy, i disagree. We can feel that way, we should feel that way, and we're expected to feel that way.

So, if a person can be happy by getting close to hashem, well and good. A big part of that (as we see from commentaries on the abovementioned story) which is more practical for most of us, is seeing things from a positive perspective. Being happy is a choice we make.

Briut - I hear your point. However, I think that some people, more than others, have trouble with any delay of pleasure. Others, are able to better deal with a small delay, if overall their life is happy and pleasurable.

d_teddybear wrote on 15 Dec 2010 16:27:
I totally agree, as long as you're talking about Disneyland or Club Med or acting out or the other shtuss mainstream culture defines as pleasure.

But, I think it was the Brisker Rav who insisted on touring Switzerland -- he thought that in the Olam shel Emes, the Ebishter was going to ask him, "did you see My alps," and he didn't want to disappoint Him.

So I think this might depend somewhat on our kavannah in seeking out the pleasure.... Just a thought; reasonable minds can disagree!

Briut wrote on 15 Dec 2010 19:06:


(i dont wanna sound like a know it all but im pretty sure it was rav shamshon raphael hirsch - that quote is attributed to him in his biography and its a beautiful idea)

an honest mouse wrote on 15 Dec 2010 22:12:



a lot of time pple misuse this quote to excuse their elaborate vacations or what not. what r' shamson rapheal hirsch meant was it brought him to recognition of HaShem's gadlus etc. he didn't go there just to 'enjoy the view'.

tachlis. yes we can be happy, happy is different from pleasure i use the term pleasure to represent a selfish 'me! make ME happy please ME give ME EVERYTHING my heart desires."

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.
~ Rabindranath Tagore

lotta wisdom in there...
i often think if i'll have that gadget, car, house, experience, etc., THEN i'll really be happy. never works.
the only true lasting happiness is when we do the right thing and work towards our goal.

"One who is laboring to achieve, to build, and is aware that the result is taking shape as it should cannot be depressed no matter how hard the work." (Rabbi Akiva Tatz, The Thinking Jewish Teenagers Guide to Life)

me likee

WE ARE ADDICTED TO PLEASURE! Thats it finished. PLEASURE IS OUR HIGHER POWER. We dont feel right when we dont have it. We can learn to have pleasure from simple things. The alter of slobodka said the purpose of birchas hanehenin is to make a person stop and think of the pleasure inherent in a plain appe.