 In the fourth century, before the common era, that's a long time ago, fourth century BCE, Aristotle wrote that happiness is the ultimate human goal. The ultimate thing that we pursue as human beings is happiness, although it seems to me you don't need to be an Aristotle to arrive at that conclusion. In 2014, most of you probably remember Farrell Williams had a hit song called Happy, and it reached the top of the charts in both the United States and the United Kingdom. It sold over 14 million records worldwide, and it's been viewed over 800 million times on YouTube. Now, this song seems to have coincided, with an intense popularity in recent years with books devoted to the topic of happiness. I'm a big book shopper, I'm a book-themed, and I always notice that when you go to the bookstores there are certain themes that are the rage, so you all remember years ago you couldn't turn without seeing a book on the Da Vinci Code. And then for a while it was gluten-free diets. And then there were all these books about the human brain and how to fix your brain. There were always books that seemed to just provoke a tremendous amount of popularity. One of the themes that's very, very popular recently have been a number of books, quite a few books, dealing with the topic of happiness. Just published in the last few years. One of the authors of some of these books is an Israeli academic named Dr. Tal Ben-Shachar, who teaches a course on how to be happier, and it was the most popular course at Harvard University back in 2006, and it still is one of the most popular courses there. Over the past 20 years there's been an entire new discipline that arose called positive psychology that deals basically with well-being. Now we know that almost all of the studies in this field have revealed a strong positive correlation between having a religious, spiritual life, and happiness. The most interesting news story to come out was a request by the New York Times to the pollsters at Gallup Polls to come up with a statistical composite of the happiest person in America. Some of you might recall this story. And they interviewed, the Gallup people interviewed 372,000 people. It's a pretty significant sample. And they came up with the following profile of what they imagine would be the happiest person in America. And they said, the person would be a tall Asian-American who would be a religious Jew. Now that shouldn't be funny. At least 65 years old, married with children, living in Hawaii, running his own business and making at least $120,000 a year. What do you know? They soon turned up a person who fit this description to a tee. Mr. Alvin Wang is a Chinese-American man who's an observant Jew, living in Hawaii. He's 5'10", 69 years old, married with children, runs his own healthcare management company and earns over $120,000 a year. Now we all know that it doesn't hurt to have money, but we know that it's no assurer of happiness. And one of the things that's most disturbing is that despite all of the concern that we seem to have in the world today about achieving happiness, it doesn't seem like most people are achieving very positive outcomes. The percentage of Americans on antidepressant medication has doubled between 1999 and 2012, and there are today about 13% of the population being treated with antidepressant medication. We know that most people tend to experience their lives in peaks and valleys. There are periodic high points, getting married, going on vacation, having children, getting a promotion at work, going to parties, winning an award, and these are exhilarating experiences. But then between these are lots of downtime, lots of grind, daily routine, managing not to get drowned in the rat race, difficulties in life. And so the challenge is, how do you go through all of life with what we call simchat hachaim, a joy of living, a joy of being alive, living with joy, living with happiness, not just sometimes at those rare moments, but all the time. And that's going to be our focus for tonight. Now, one persistent problem is illustrated by an incredibly beautiful teaching by Rav Avraham Yitzchak Cook, who was the first chief rabbi of the modern state of Israel. And he teaches about a famous midrash in the Book of Genesis in Bereishit, which says that actually there's a misconception about what happened in the Garden of Eden. If you ask most people, what was the first act of rebellion in the Garden of Eden, most people will say it's when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That's what most people would say. And the midrash says actually it's close, but not quite correct. There actually was a prior act of rebellion involving trees. What was that? So the midrash says that on the third day of creation, God said, let the earth sprout fruit trees, fruit trees yielding fruit. But the earth didn't do that. The Torah just says that the earth brought forth trees yielding fruit. God wanted fruit trees, where the tree itself could be eaten, where the tree was edible, where the tree was fruit. And God wanted these edible trees, these fruit trees to also produce fruit. And yet that's not what happened. The midrash says that the trees rebelled. If you want to think about what that means, we'll get to it in a moment. The trees didn't obey, and they didn't become fruit trees. They just became trees. If you look at the text, that's what it says. And we have trees that do produce fruit. And the midrash says that because these trees rebelled, actually it was the earth that rebelled. God spoke to the earth and said to the earth, produce fruit trees that will produce fruit. So the midrash says that when later on God cursed Adam for rebelling against God's commandment not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and God cursed Adam, the midrash says that God at that time cursed the earth as well. As it says in Genesis 3.17, a cursed is the ground because of you. Now Rev Cook in his famous say fair, Oroz Hachuva, the lights of repentance, writes, trying to explain what is this midrash teaching us? What does it mean? So Rev Cook says that what it means is that the curse of this worldly existence, he wants to understand what does it mean that the earth is cursed because it didn't produce trees that are edible and the trees that taste good. So Rev Cook says that the curse of this world's existence is that everyone loves the fruit but hates the trees. We don't like the trees because why? They don't have any taste, just wood. If it was fruit, if you could just grab a piece of tree and eat it and it would taste like a pear or a banana or an apple, I would love that. But we can't eat the tree. And so Rev Cook cryptically says that what the midrash is teaching us is that the curse of this earthly existence is that we as human beings only love the fruit. We don't love the trees. What does this mean? What is Rev Cook getting at? So I think what he means is this. Fruit and trees represent what we could call means and ends. We basically look to the tree as a means to an end. What is a tree good for? It produces fruit. Do we really care so much about the tree? Not really, I mean we care about it for some things but basically the tree we see primarily as something that produces fruit. It's a means to an end. And that's what we see as the purpose of the tree. And so all I care about is the fruit. I don't care about the tree. But originally the tree itself was supposed to be edible. We were supposed to be able to eat the tree. It was supposed to be not just edible but delicious. But now we don't have fruit trees. We just have trees that produce fruit. And so no one really cares about the trees other than their potential for producing fruit. And so too I think what Rev Cook is teaching us is that in so many parts and aspects of our lives all we look forward to are the fruits, the end product of the process. We look forward to these high points in our lives. But the day to day process, the day to day living, getting there, we don't appreciate, we don't enjoy. So we might be thrilled to graduate from university but having to go to class every day and schlep and do homework and go to the library and do research, we often don't appreciate that. We don't look forward to that so much. We look forward to the diploma or parents raising their children probably look forward to their kids graduating high school one day and then graduating university one day and then getting married one day and giving them grandchildren and having a lot of nachas. That's what parents might really look forward to. But looking forward to getting up every night and changing diapers and all the difficulties of raising the kids day to day and they're getting into trouble in school and then dating people who drive you crazy, that's not so much things that we look forward to. We often get very little pleasure and enjoyment out of the day to day routine parts of our life. Our sages teach in the Talmud, tractate Aruvan 13B, that the person who chases after honor will find that honor will flee from them. It'll run away from you. But the person who flees away from honor will find that honor will chase after them. And a similar dynamic is often true when it comes to happiness. When we have happiness as a goal and we pursue happiness, it often slips away from us. It eludes us. Real happiness is really an outgrowth of a well-lived life. It's an outgrowth of a well-lived life. It's not the goal of life. Unfortunately, we're often our own worst enemies in this regard and engage in a tremendous amount of self-destructive behavior and other things to sabotage our own happiness. The prophet Isaiah wrote in chapter 49 verse 17, Those who ruin you and destroy you will come forth from you. Now obviously he's referring there to the people who will take down the nation of Israel. Often it's the Jews from within the nation of Israel that are worst enemies of the Jewish people. But on a more homiletic level, what it's saying is for each one of us, we are our own worst enemies. We cause the most damage to ourselves. We worry, we're anxious about the future. We suffer from feelings of guilt, inadequacy, worthlessness. We lose hope about the future. It's what is often called stinking thinking. And it destroys us. It robs us of our happiness. Tonight what I'd like to share are some thoughts on how we can live our lives in ways that will hopefully ride on an even keel of simcha, of joy, of happiness. Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twersky maintains that in order to function optimally, we have to be true to our true nature and to our true selves. We have to live authentically if we're ever going to live optimally. Now what distinguishes us from the animal kingdom? What is it that makes us uniquely human? It's basically our soul and our spiritual nature. This is really the most essential part of who we are because ultimately our physical bodies have a very short shelf life. And Rabbi Twersky proposes an idea that he describes as spiritual deficiency syndrome that says when we don't nourish this side of ourselves, when we don't nourish our souls properly, it will lead to discontent and an absence of joy in our lives. Carl Gustav Jung, who was a famous Swiss psychiatrist, passed away in 1961, confirmed this idea. He said that in the many decades that he practiced psychotherapy, all of his patients suffered from undernourished souls. They weren't meeting the needs of their souls. Now there are two Hebrew words that are pronounced the same but are spelled differently. Two Hebrew words that are pronounced exactly the same but spelled differently. There's the word oh-share with an ion and oh-share with an aleph. Oh-share with an ion means wealth. Oh-share with an aleph means happiness. And one of the lessons we're taught here is that wealth, because it begins with the letter ion, ion in the word ion means nothingness, emptiness, that we learn that riches can actually be very empty unless they're directed to the aleph of the word oh-share, which means happiness. And the letter aleph in Hebrew represents godliness and spirituality. Real happiness exists when you are living a life of ultimate meaning and purpose and each day is experienced as moving towards your goals. That basically sums up all I have to share with you tonight. Real happiness exists. You will have a happy life when you are living a life of ultimate meaning and purpose and each day is experienced as a step along the way to meeting your goals. Abraham, the first Jew, was told lech lecha, which means literally go to yourself. Go to who you can be. That's what God told Abraham. You're in this world to become each one of us, the greatest human being you're capable of being. That's why each one of us is in this world. We're here for nothing less than to be the greatest human being we're capable of being. Lech lecha, go to yourself. Go to who you can be. We are here to self-actualize and work at constantly improving and growing. If you want to understand why we're alive, what we're supposed to be doing with our lives, it is growing, it's developing, it's improving, it's working towards the goals of becoming the best person we can be. Rabbi Shem Shin Rafferl Hirsch noted that the word for growth in Hebrew, tzomeach, the word for growth, tzomeach, sounds very similar to the word for happiness. Sameach, the words for growth and happiness sound very close to each other because these ideas are very related. We as human beings can be happy when we are growing. De Vilna Gown, the great, great rabbinic sage who lived about 300 years ago, wrote that the entire purpose, the entire purpose of why we were put into this world is to perfect our character traits. We were put here to work on and to perfect our characters. Do we tend towards being stubborn? Is that true of us? Are some of us self-centered and selfish? Do we have a short fuse and often impatient? Do we procrastinate? Are we arrogant? Are we unreliable? There's a long catalog, a long list of personality traits and each one of us is supposed to identify which ones are relevant to them and to then work on refining ourselves. No two people are made up in the same character traits. Each one of us is given a different hand of cards when we're born and it's affected by our upbringing. But we all know people who have no problem with anger. They're the calmest people in the world. And then we all know people who are irascible and short-tempered. And you could see differences like this in little tiny babies. You see babies that are calm as calm can be and you see babies that are just hyper and they're just wild. So we are different as people and so each one of us has to determine and it's not so easy to determine which traits that I have to work on but that, N'v'l-Nagong says, is why we were put into this world. Rav Moshe Chaim Lutzato, the Ramchal also lived about 300 years ago, wrote and this is a critical idea that the ultimate purpose of our existence, the ultimate purpose of our existence is to experience ultimate pleasure and joy. That's why God created us to experience ultimate pleasure and joy. To rejoice, as the Ramchal says, in the spiritual bliss of connecting to God. The ultimate pleasure possible. That's why we were created. God didn't create us for third or fourth class pleasures. I'm going to be the greatest jinn rummy player in the world. That's not the ultimate pleasure. The ultimate pleasure is the ability to connect ourselves and attach ourselves to the source of everything that exists in the world. And the Ramchal writes that this pleasure that we can connect ourselves to God and we can enjoy and take delight in this closest to God, this happens principally in the world to come where it's going to be a permanent and eternal pleasure without the static and interference and distractions of our bodies and the physical world we're living in now. Yet the Altar of Slabotka wrote that we're also supposed to experience to the degree possible this kind of spiritual pleasure in this world as well in our present terrestrial lives. After all, if we don't experience and have any appreciation of spiritual pleasure now if spiritual pleasure now does not resonate with us at all we're not going to get much out of it in the world to come either. So part of our self-development in this life right now is not only to perfect our character traits but it's to grow in our closest to God to immerse ourselves in the Torah that God gave us where he reveals himself to us to develop our relationship to God through prayer through communicating with him and serving him by being obedient to his instructions and the Torah itself says this is the greatest source of joy and pleasure. If you go to the Book of Psalms the very first chapter in the Book of Psalms asks or tells us who is the happy person the very beginning of the Book of Psalms who is the happy person it's the person who Torah Sashem Shephtzo that his desire, that his longing is for the Torah of God the person that's connected to God's Torah will be happy person Psalm 19 Psalm 19 says The charges of God are straight they gladden the heart they make us happy that's where we're going to find Simcha if you go to the Book of Kohela of Ecclesiastes Solomon the wisest person who ever lived was dealing with this question of how do you live a pleasurable life and he was observing throughout the Book that most people don't have pleasurable lives and he's on a quest all over the whole world searching for pleasure and he sees that most of what people do he says is empty vanity nothingness and the book itself ends very abruptly by basically saying at the very last verse that at the end of the day everything is revealed to us and that is that the only true pleasure is in our connection and our service of God so the truth is that right now our lives are one gigantic building project I often joke that when people ask me what denomination in Judaism are you I say my denomination is under constructionism because that's why we're here and one of the reasons that working on self perfection we call it slain-wit, wholeness becoming people that are whole one of the reasons that brings us so much satisfaction is that our lives are totally integrated when we're living this kind of life where we're directed to the goals of improving our characters and getting close to God our lives have total integration every aspect of our life fits into this model we're living authentically and expressing our true selves our sages used to teach there's no joy in the world as great as removing doubts and what they're saying basically is that when we achieve clarity about what our lives are for when we're clear about why we're in this world what are we living for what's it all about what are our ultimate goals and knowing that we're moving in that direction that is the greatest happiness we know that one of the ancient Greek philosophers said that the unexamined life is not worth living and it's so sad that some people can go through their entire life 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 years and never ask themselves this question why am I living what am I here for they just come out of the womb and that's it automatic pilot and you get a job and go to work and have a family and never stop to ask this question so the rabbis are teaching that when we have clarity about this we don't have any doubts about why we're here and what we're doing in this life that brings us tremendous happiness the sages of the Talmud teach in Braho 63a what is the one verse in the entire Bible that sums up the entire basis of Judaism they wanted to find one verse that basically everything is taught in that verse and they quoted a verse in the book of Proverbs chapter 3 verse 6 meaning that when we live a life where every single aspect of our life every part of our life even the most seemingly mundane routine parts of life can become meaningful and spiritual when it plays a part in our overall spiritual goals that's a life that will bring tremendous happiness because we know that every single thing we're doing is meaningful has direction a happy life is one that's lived towards fulfilling our potential of course it's hard to work to achieve self perfection achieving something meaningful and lasting this is hard work growth as we all know can be painful as we say no pain no gain Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers famously wrote that no one learns to master anything without putting in 10,000 hours of hard work Rabbi Twersky often speaks about the way that lobsters grow he writes as they develop as lobsters grow and develop their shell becomes too confining and restrictive for them so what does the lobster do it then hides under a rock to get away from predators it sheds its protective shell and then it grows a larger shell and this cycle continues as the lobster continues to grow the stimulus as the lobster to grow is the pressure and the discomfort it feels when its shell becomes too small there was once a man who saw a cocoon with a butterfly that was trying to get out there was a tiny hole in the cocoon and this butterfly was struggling and struggling mightily for hours to get out of the cocoon but it didn't seem to be making any kind of headway so the man felt sorry for the butterfly he took out his pocket knife and he cut a small opening in the cocoon so the butterfly could emerge and immediately the butterfly came out but the man noticed that it was contorted its body was contorted and its wings were shriveled so he took the butterfly home hoping that eventually its wings would grow and it would be able to fly but this never happened the butterfly never had workable wings and was never able to fly the man didn't realize that the struggling to exit the cocoon transfers fluid from the body of the butterfly to its wings which then allows the wings to develop he thought he was helping the butterfly by easing its struggles but he actually crippled his grip but he actually crippled his growth we as well need to struggle and work hard in order to develop our wings so that we can reach great heights but many people avoid the investment of pain needed to grow by opting for escape through things like drugs or drinking or for superficial pleasures and distractions which don't require as much effort spending your time amusing themselves playing games, watching videos partying, hypnotized by their telephone it will never lead to a life of pleasure and sometimes people engage themselves in other kinds of construction projects that do require a lot of work but become a substitute for the ideal building projects that we're here for a person can spend a lifetime achieving the perfect physique or mastering their golf swing or cultivating a beautiful lawn and collection of antique cars people sometimes invest a lot of energy in things that they find give them some pleasure and these things are pleasurable and there's nothing wrong with doing these things but they were never meant to be the major focus of our lives we know that happy people still have difficulties in life but their default setting is to be positive about life and to be joyful about being alive no matter how difficult their lives are our inner state our inner state has a tremendous impact on how we experience life's experiences the Hebrew word Simcha Simcha where Toat is composed of two words the word Sham and the word Moach Simcha is composed of the word Sham and Moach there is the mind and Simcha basically is saying where is your head at where is your mind how are you seeing things and the way you see things can bring you great joy in the book of Exodus chapter 15 verse 23 when the Jews came out of Egypt were told they came to a place called Mara the word Mara actually means bitter they came to this place called Mara but the Bible says they could not drink the waters of Mara because they were bitter the way the verses normally understood is that the water was bitter we couldn't drink it but some of our commentaries say no they were bidders referring to the Jews because they were bitter everything tasted bitter and we all know this there are people who are just sometimes negative people and because their inner state is negative everything is seen as negative red glasses everything looks red if you're a bitter person inside everything is experienced as bitter our outlook frames everything that we experience in Leviticus chapter 6 verse 5 we're told the fire on the altar shall be kept burning on it it shall not be extinguished it shall not be extinguished lo tichbeh and the altar Rebbe of Chabad the Balatania says lo tichbeh can be translated as extinguish the negativity tichbeh extinguished the lo the knowness that we have to struggle to try and to extinguish and eliminate negativity from our viewpoint from our lives reframing our experiences reframing how we experience things is a very powerful tool for example rather than asking Lama when something is tragic or we go through something difficult rather than asking Lama why did that happen we're urged to ask Lema for what purpose did that happen what can we learn from it I want to share a story that I've shared before it's actually one of my favorite stories about someone who learned to grow from something very tragic this is a story by Rachel Naomi Rehmann in a book called Soul Food and Rachel writes the following as a physician I had a man come into my practice with bone cancer his leg was removed at the hip to save his life I was 30 years old when I started working with him and he was a very angry man with a lot of bitterness he felt a deep sense of injustice and a very deep hatred for all well people because it seemed so unfair to him that he had suffered this terrible loss so early in his life I worked with this man through his grief and rage and pain using painting, imagery and deep psychotherapy working with him for more than two years there came a profound shift he began coming out of himself later he started to visit other people who had suffered severe physical losses and he would tell me the most wonderful stories about these visits once he visited a young woman who was almost his own age it was a hot day in Palo Alto and he was in his running shorts and his artificial leg showed when he came into her hospital room the woman was so depressed about the loss of both of her breasts that she wouldn't even look at him she wouldn't pay attention to him the nurses had left her radio playing probably in order to help cheer her up so desperate to get her attention he unstrapped his leg and began dancing around the room on one leg and then the nurse to the music she looked at him in amusement and burst out laughing and said, man if you can dance, then I can sing it was a year following this that we sat down to review our work together he talked about what was significant to him and then I shared what was significant in our process and as we were reviewing our two years of work together he opened his file and there discovered several drawings he had made early on I handed them to him he looked at them and he said oh, look at this he showed me one of his earliest drawings I had suggested to him that he draw a picture of his body he had drawn a picture of a vase and running through the vase was a deep black crack this was the image of the body he had and he had taken a black crayon and had drawn the crack over and over again he was grinding his teeth with rage at the time it was very very painful because it seemed to him that this vase would never function again as a vase it could never hold water now several years later he came to this picture and he looked at it and said it wasn't finished and I said extending the box of crayons why don't you finish it he picked a yellow crayon and putting his finger on the crack he said you see here where it's broken this is where the light comes through and with the yellow crayon he drew light streaming through the crack in his body because we can all grow strong at the broken places reframing is an extremely popular and powerful tool for changing our experience in life rather than talking about something that we have to do an obligation, a task and say that I've got to do certain things we can reframe that by saying I get to do those things a master of reframing was Rabbi Akiva the Talmud tells a story of how Rabbi Akiva and some of his colleagues walked in the area of the temple mount after the destruction of the temple and they saw a fox emerging from the place of the holy of holies his colleagues began to cry and Rabbi Akiva began to laugh and they asked Rabbi Akiva why are you laughing and Rabbi Akiva asked them why are you crying and they said why are we crying look a fox is playing around the place of the holy of holies that's why we're crying and Rabbi Akiva said and that's why I'm laughing he said because there was a prophecy about the temple's destruction but there was also a prophecy about the rebuilding of the temple and Rabbi Akiva said now that I see the prophecy about the destruction of the temple being fulfilled I know for sure that the prophecy about the rebuilding of the temple is going to be fulfilled and it was this kind of positive optimism that allowed Rabbi Akiva to rebuild after losing 24,000 of his students. Rabbi Akiva had 24,000 students who perished in a plague during this time of the year that we're in right now and it would have devastated most people but because Rabbi Akiva was so positive and was able to see everything in a positive way he didn't give up hope and he was able to rebuild Torah with new students afterward according to the author of the Chovos Halavavos the duties of the heart written about a thousand years ago by Bach ibn Pakuda one of the most potent ways of achieving tranquility and exposition in life is by cultivating trust in God David writes in the book of Psalms chapter 55 verse 23 cast your burden upon Hashem and he will sustain you we don't have to go through our lives alone David was a person of very deep trust and that's what allowed David to look through the valley of the shadow of death without fear because he knew that God was with him now the topic of bitachon of trust is a massive topic that we won't be able to fully explore tonight but we can increase our sense of reliance and trust in God by focusing on prayer on speaking to God in our own words reflecting with the lessons found in David's book of Psalms bitachon basically means letting go and letting God letting go and letting God recognizing that we are not in control of our lives we are not in control of what happens in this world only God is in control that doesn't mean that we're able to sit back and do nothing we're required to put in a normal amount of effort to do the things that life requires we have to go to work we have to go to doctors but we only have to put in a normal amount of effort we don't have to go overboard and kill ourselves and worry ourselves sick about everything we're able to rely and have trust in God that runs the world a remendal footerfas who was born in 1906 and passed away in 1995 was a very, very deeply spiritual Chabad Khosud who was once asked how he managed to survive for so many years in a communist slave labor camp in Siberia he was imprisoned there for many years for teaching Torah and he explained that he once saw something amazing whose lesson allowed him to survive all of those torturous years in Siberia what did he see he once saw a man who suspended a long steel wire between two mountains that were on opposite sides of a valley and he then began slowly walking across this suspended type rope he carefully walked step by step until he reached the other side the next day he gathered a big crowd and he said to everyone he'd repeat the same feat but this time he would pull a wheelbarrow behind him and before beginning his trek across this high wire he asked if there was anyone prepared to sit in the wheelbarrow behind him as he dragged it across this tightrope everyone was silent no one volunteered and finally a young child called out and said that he would sit in the wheelbarrow so the child got into the wheelbarrow inch by inch the man crossed the tightrope with the boy in the wheelbarrow behind him after doing this feat a number of times the man became very famous became a celebrity he was able to charge people to actually watch him perform this stunt and after he descended into the valley people surrounded him and they asked the boy who are you and why he was willing to go into the wheelbarrow and the boy said that the man is my father and if he said he could take me in the wheelbarrow I trusted him because he would never put me in a position where I would get hurt or killed now Rev Mendel Futterfoss was blown away by this sight and he went over to the man to ask him what his secret was what is your secret for being able to do this how could he do something so dangerous without losing his nerve and the man said the following he said when I walk across the tightrope the rest of the world ceases to exist as far as I'm concerned the only thing that exists for me is the next step I'm going to take there's no tightrope there's no steep drop only this step and the next step if I were to look down or if I were to look ahead to see how far I had to go choose my balance and fall to my death so Rev Mendel said that this was the key to his life and it's what allowed him to survive all those years in this prison in Siberia the key was not to worry about the past and not to think too much about the future you should only think about what's in front of you right at this moment and on the step that you're taking right now we should always ask ourselves what does God want from me at this moment what am I supposed to be doing right now and that's how we can navigate all of the trials of life if we strive to live only in the present moment only in the here and now nothing will ever overwhelm us in life the reason we get overwhelmed is we start worrying all about the past and we start thinking about what's going to be in the future and we get overwhelmed so one of the secrets is to be focused only on the present moment and the truth is unless we're fully alive and awake in this present moment we'll never be able to appreciate what comes our way in life we can't pay attention to what's going on right in front of us right now you can have the most wonderful thing in your lap and you won't appreciate it because you're not there for it we'll always get distracted and that's why so many stories in the Bible where people are giving blessings the word biome appears on that day that's what the blessings are emphasizing be focused on the day that you're experiencing now don't worry about the past or whether you'll be able to sustain this blessing in the future just focus on the here and now now Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough are two social scientists who study well-being and happiness and they found that people who keep a daily gratitude journal writing down at least five things a day that they were thankful for enjoyed significantly higher levels of emotional and physical well-being than others who didn't engage in this practice there's a story told about a very huge industrialist who worked in a huge modern all computerized 50-story office building and one day he was tired of sitting at his desk he was there all morning so he decided to get up for a few minutes before having lunch and he purposely left his phone and his tablet and everything else in his office and he went to the roof of the building for some peace and quiet for a few minutes and then he realized something and he panicked because he noticed that the door to the roof had an electronic lock and he had left his swipe key in the office and now he didn't know how he was going to get back into the building so he began to scream his head off and no one could hear him it's on the 50th floor of this building and he started getting more and more upset and panicking and sweating what is he going to do probably going to end up dying up here no one will know and then he realized all of a sudden that he had $10,000 in his wallet in $100 bills so he figured that what he'd do was throw him down to the street and people will look up to see where they're coming from and then he'll be rescued but it didn't work out that way when he threw the bills down people would look left and right they would grab the money and just run away without looking up and he was getting more and more upset and he paced the roof in a panic and then he noticed on the side of the roof with some gravel in the corner so he picked up a pebble and he threw it down to the street the pebble hit a pedestrian and the man immediately looked up very angrily and started screaming what are you crazy, what are you doing what's wrong with you what's the moral of the story God throws us countless blessings all day long in all aspects of our life thank God our minds can work we have a job we have a spouse kids a place to live we have food, we have clothing we have arms, we have legs we have eyes, we have ears almost an infinite number of things to be thankful for but all too often we don't look up to acknowledge where these gifts come from only when a pebble hits us and something doesn't go our way that we look up and begin to complain the truth is that being alive is reason enough to be happy if we appreciate life and its value and how much we can accomplish in our lives we'll be happy regardless of what else is going on or what we don't have and that's why Judaism teaches that the very first thing we should do in the morning when we awaken is to thank God that we're alive the very first words that cross our lips I acknowledge I'm thankful to you God that you returned my soul to me because some people don't wake up in the morning and that should be the very very first thing is to acknowledge, to be grateful to be thankful that we're alive we're showered constantly with blessings and one of the most powerful ways to cultivate happiness is by simply paying attention to these blessings appreciating them and expressing thanks as I said before the word for joy in Hebrew Simcha is composed of the word there is your mind what are you paying attention to if you're paying attention to what you have in life unfortunately we often fall victim to what Joni Mitchell sang about in her song The Big Yellow Taxi she said don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got till it's gone and that's often the truth that we don't appreciate that which we have until unfortunately we lose it the Talmud teaches very succinctly in ethics of the fathers chapter 3 Mishnah 1 that the wealthy person is the one that is satisfied with what they have the wealthy person is not the multi-billionaire the wealthy person could be someone that doesn't have much at all but if they're happy with what they have they are a wealthy person a person that's satisfied with their lot with whatever they have and whatever they're experiencing that person is a happy person people who focus on accumulating more and more things are usually never satisfied as the Talmud teaches the person who has 100 wants 200 and we don't need a lot to be happy that's why of all the holidays in the Torah the one that is specifically associated with Simcha with Joy is the holiday of Sukkot when we don't sit in our beautiful fancy comfortable homes with all of the stuff in it we build a simple hut and we live in it for a week and there we're able to experience ultimate joy now while this talk does not exhaust the topic of happiness I want to conclude tonight with one final idea the Torah teaches us not only to learn how to appreciate the blessings that we have the Torah encourages us to share our blessings with others the Torah says you shall rejoice with all the goodness that the Lord your God has given you and your household and then the Torah says you shall give to the Levite the Orphan and the widow that they shall eat in your cities and be satisfied we know that happy people give people that are happy life to share what they have and we know that giving makes us joyous and happy people that volunteer people that help others people that give to others people that extend themselves will tell you that it brings them tremendous joy and fulfillment we are all created in the image of God and God is a giver not a taker being a giver is more in line and more in tune with our true selves often takers and self centered people are not happy someone once complained to the Labavacherebi he wrote the Labavacherebi a letter and the Lord said I'm not a very satisfied person I'm not finding much joy from my family from my work I'm not really finding much satisfaction from my Judaism I find myself often depressed I'm not happy with my life and this is the letter that went on for an entire page and the Rebbe sent his letter back the Rebbe didn't write anything all the Rebbe did was to circle the first word of each sentence every single word every single sentence this person wrote began with the word I and people that are overly self centered and selfish will not be happy people as it says at the end of the book of Deuteronomy the Torah accounts various blessings and curses that God will give the Jewish people and one of the blessings in chapter 28 of Deuteronomy verse 13 says you will only be on the top and not on the bottom one of the blessings you will only be on the top and not on the bottom now obviously if we're being told we're going to be on the top then we're not going to be on the bottom why does the Torah need to tell us you're not going to be on the bottom just say you'll always be on top you don't need to explain that you're also not going to be on the bottom but two places at one time So R visually to explain this verse directs us directs our attention to the famous prayer of Yavitz in Debra Hayyamun chapter first chronicles first Debra Hayyamun with chapter four verse 10 first chronicles 4, 10 where Yavitz says to God if you will bless me and extend my borders If you will bless me and extend my borders, what does this mean? So what it means is that sometimes people are given great blessings and bounty. But if they're not able to handle it, it will destroy them. We know that people can win the lottery and become instant multi-millionaires, and they will be people whose lives fall apart within a year. We see that there are athletes and entertainers who might be unknown one day, and the next year they're a big star and they're making hundreds of millions of dollars, and their lives become a living hell. When the priests give their blessing to us, it's found in the Book of Numbers, chapter 6, verses 23-24, the first blessing is, HaShem v. Yishmarecha, may God bless you and God protect you. Our sages say, may God bless you with good stuff, and may he protect you from it. We sometimes have to be protected from all the things that we have, because sometimes having a lot of stuff isn't good for us. So what Yavets is asking for in his prayer is not just for blessing, but he asks God, God, please also enlarge my borders to become a bigger person capable of appreciating the blessings. How does a person become a bigger person? So the Talmud explains that what he really was asking for when he asked his God to bless him and expand his borders, he's saying to God, if you will bless me with Torah and with disciples, that's what he's asking for. God, don't just give me a lot of Torah, give me Torah with disciples, with students. If you give me something, God, help me share it with others. When we share things with others, we become bigger people, less self-centered. So when a Torah says you'll be on the top and not on the bottom, what it means is that you'll be on the top with blessing that you'll receive, but you won't be on the bottom, meaning you won't remain on the bottom, you won't be a small person not able to handle the blessings. We'll grow into becoming bigger people and larger vessels capable of receiving God's blessings. In the book of Exodus, chapter 2 verse 11, when the Torah tells us about Moses in his early days, the Torah says, It was in those days that Moses grew and he went out to his brothers. Rabbi Elie Melechel Lozent Toras, then how did Moses grow? How did he grow? By going out to his brothers. But being a person who was not focused only on himself, by someone who cared about others, that was concerned about others, that went out to help others, that's how Moses became someone who was great. And what I hope that I was able to accomplish tonight in the limited time that we had, was to share at least a few strategies and a few approaches to how we can live our lives in ways that will bring us more joy and happiness.