The Pursuit of Happiness

The Talmud, the Gemara tells a story of a Rabbi Broka who found himself standing in the middle of a marketplace side by side with Eliyahu Hanavi, Elijah the Prophet, as I suppose one does. And he pondered upon all the people walking about over there with varying apparent statures, some astute-looking, others seemingly more bearish, and he asked, "Is there anyone here who belongs in the world to come?"

It was an eclectic mix, and the Rabbi simply wanted to know if there was anyone unique, maybe extraordinary, amongst all of the masses. And Elijah the Prophet immediately pointed out two brothers that were walking along. And of course, Rabbi Broka becomes very excited. He's intrigued. These must be two lofty individuals. They may be some of the hidden righteous within our midst. And he wonders, "What is special about them?"

So, he runs immediately after them. He stops the two brothers, and he says, "Gentlemen, forgive me for intruding like this. Can I ask you, what is it that you do? What is your profession?" And they replied, "We are jesters. We make sad people laugh. And when we see people in a quarrel, then we will use humor to make peace between them."

Stopping right here, at face value, one immediately determines the power of joy. These men, whom for all we know might be simple in every other way, but they made it their life's mission, their sole preoccupation to simply make other people happy. And in as much as the Mishna tells us that everyone has a share in the world to come, it might require a certain kind of process before you're able to actually get there. These two, they're guaranteed immediate entry. Why? Because of the power of happiness.

I'm going to ask you all to please do something for me at this moment in time. I'm going to ask you all to close your eyes for 30 seconds and just think about one or two things that may be realities in your life that give you reason to be sad. Please proceed. Now, I'm going to ask you to stop, open your eyes. Pause a moment, and now you're going to close them again for another 30 seconds and think of one or two reasons, real reasons, why you should have a reason to be glad, to be happy. Go ahead.

Okay. And then all I need you to do, and you don't need to take any more time for this, is to consider which ones outweigh the others. And I maintain, and you can correct me right here and right now if I'm wrong, that with the exception of extreme circumstances, 99.9 times out of 100, the happy factors will outweigh the sad factors. Would that be correct? And then you need to be honest with yourself and ask, "Why then do you allow for yourself to get sad?"

If you just checked the numbers on your lottery ticket, and you saw that you won $57 million jackpot, and you jump up for joy, and you come crashing down, and you break your leg, God forbid, in the process, let me ask you something. How much pain do you actually think that you're going to be in? Because even as they're wheeling you in to pin that leg to get leg together in the operating theater, chances are you'll be thinking about how you're going to be spending your winnings, convalescing when you come out the other side. So, how come we don't apply that same model to our daily lives?

Yes, right now there may be certain things that get me down. They make me feel sad, despondent. But what about the lottery ticket? What about the winning numbers that you're holding in your hand? Doesn't the bigger picture outweigh the present reality? You just went through the simple experiment. The reasons to be happy override, invariably, the reasons to be sad. So, why do we allow for ourselves to become perplexed, rather than concentrating on the goodness that beckons again when we come out the other side?

Psychology will tell you, very simply, that there is something called a negativity bias, that even when all things are equal, we're naturally inclined to want to feel more negative than positive. Judaism will maintain that that's very much the yetzer hara. That's your evil inclination that strives for supremacy over you and does so by means of trying to get you to focus more on the negative in your life. Curiously, psychology also maintains that if you spend 12 seconds focusing on the positive, you can work your way out of that otherwise so-called natural negativity about negativity bias. Just 12 seconds or more. Judaism? It pretty much advocates the same thing. And it encourages you to start your day like that every single morning. To focus on the positive, on the blessings in your life. Just 12 seconds. It only takes 1 second to say each word. Modeh Ani Lefanecha Melech Chai Vekayam, Shehecheyanu Vekiyemanu Rabba Emunasecha. 12 seconds. You open your eyes first thing in the morning. You concentrate on the blessings in your life and that'll set perspective for the overall day.

The Baal Shem Tov was puzzled about that aforementioned Talmudic story. This idea of these two brothers that were encountered, these two jesters. And he asked and he was told that the jesters were in fact special people who were able to connect with others when they identified within them their souls. And when they identified within them their souls, they were able to somehow see the connection between the individual they encountered and the upper realms from whence they stemmed. And by doing so, they were able to abolish any negative heavenly decree that may have otherwise been decreed against the individual. But if somebody was depressed, then they weren't able to make this connection. This sadness was an obstacle, a brick wall, so they would actively go and cheer the person up with some jest and humor such that they would then be able to make the necessary connections again.

What does that actually mean to you and me? Well, it's well known how the 19th century scholar Rabbi Aaron of Karlin once famously said, "Sadness itself is not a sin, but what it can lead to can be worse than any sin." In other words, sadness is not a sin, but it is undeniably an impediment. It's a brick wall that obstructs the inherent blessings in our lives. Not just in the spiritual sense, as per the aforementioned analysis of the Baal Shem Tov, but every bit in the practical sense, as well. Because inasmuch as there is blessing in all of our lives, we allow for the sadness to override and consume us to a point where we may become, if not totally oblivious to those blessings, certainly in denial of them. So, the blessings don't disappear. We just mask over them with our doom and gloom attitude, and yes, it becomes a formidable challenge to then rediscover those blessings. That sometimes, dare I say, can take us to blessing places where even the worst of sins may not necessarily take us.

You know, you may be aware that every single year, just before Rosh Hashanah, we recite, we read the Torah portion which contains within 98 curses. We don't read it the week before Rosh Hashanah, we read it 2 weeks before Rosh Hashanah buffer, but we always read it to give us a bit of a reality check before we step into the new year. Here's a question. What possible sin could warrant that 98 such severe curses should befall an individual? When you look throughout those verses, it doesn't say about doing anything in specific that would warrant such extreme curse and punishment. And yet the Ari, the famous mystic, points out there is one verse in the midst of it all that says simply, "Because you did not serve God with joy and with gladness of heart." In simple terms, you're a good Jew. You're a law-abiding Jew. You're a mensch who does his or her thing and makes his or her contribution, but you're not happy. You have a restless heart. You're never really at peace with yourself, and you never stop long enough to simply smell smell the roses. You do what you have to do, whether in life in general or in your Judaism in specific, but it's routine. You just go through the motions. You don't enjoy it. There is no gladness of heart.

Maimonides stipulates that one who in his in his insolence restrains himself from functioning in a joyous manner is a fool. Why a fool? Because a lot of things are inevitable in life. Aging, illness, death, has v'shalom, all losses of all different kinds, but these events don't have to be the cause of our ongoing sadness. Yes, they do cause grief, and they do cause sadness, but grief and sadness pass like everything else, and will be replaced with experiences of positivity and goodness. But sometimes, it's your ego that clings to the negative feelings, and as a result, it's your ego that magnifies, intensifies, and sustains those emotions, denying you the very real ability to rehabilitate yourself. And you then only compound the negative, and frankly, if you do that, that makes you a fool.

Hasidism tells us that those 98 curses, they're not really curses. They are actually blessings in disguise. And that's the point. God doesn't issue curses. The disgruntlement and the frustration that you feel in life is often entirely of your own creation. Your self-imposed discontentedness blocks the arteries leading to a happy heart. And as such, if you're unhappy, then you're never going to see the bigger picture in life. You're going to ignore the inherent blessings and everything will be seen and everything will be experienced in a negative context. To be sure, the blessings are there, but you're not happy. You don't see them. You're consumed with the negative and frankly, that is a curse.

There was a woman who walked up to a wrinkled old man who was walking frailly on his porch with a big smile on his face, looking ever so happy. And she says, "I couldn't help noticing how happy you look. What is your secret for a long, happy life?" And he raised his hand weakly to sort of gesture and he said, "I smoke three packs of cigarettes a day. I also drink a case of whiskey a week. I eat all kinds of fatty foods and I never exercise." And she says, "Wow, that's amazing. Do you mind if I ask how old you are?" And he says, "Sure, 26."

Happiness and joy are not conditions of the mind and heart. They have direct bearing on your overall disposition and the way you function in life. You have the very real ability to discover joy every single day. You have the opportunity to recognize the joy even within every single challenge. The joy of growth. The rest of life will come of itself. There are those who wake up in the morning, who open their eyes and they say, "Good morning, God." And there are others who wake up first thing in the morning, open their eyes, and say, "Oh, good God, morning." The difference is one, where you either despondently see every rose bush hath thorns, or you joyously perceive how even thorn bushes have roses.

You know, on every main Jewish festival, you will be aware, the priests, the Kohanim, they mount the duchan, the platform area in front of the ark in a synagogue, and they proceed to bless us with a special priestly benediction. Why is this special ritual limited to just the main festivals, and not every single Shabbos, if not in fact every single day? And the answer is because we have a principle of "disamachta bechagecha," you shall rejoice in your festivals. Yes, during these auspicious times, we are in a better frame of mind. During these festivals, we are in a happier disposition, and that's what makes us more susceptible to receiving the blessings. Happiness and blessings, they are directly correlated. You can't experience one without the other.

Now, did you know, and this is fact, that it has been scientifically demonstrated that being grumpy, especially in middle age, can knock almost a decade off your life. Professor Frederick Shellman of Umeå University in Sweden claims that those with a more melancholy disposition, especially about the general prospect of aging, and "Oy, where am I going from here?" etc., etc., will live an average 7 and 1/2 years less. And he writes in Nordic Psychology that it's to do with the stress levels generated by functioning like that, thinking like that, etc. I actually think it's more than that. You see, God puts us here in this world for a reason. We have purpose in life. We have missions to fulfill. We have people to impact. We have lives to transform. But you can't do that when you don't want to do any of that. When you're not naturally inclined to do anything like that because you're too caught up in your own issues and your own sorrows.

Kabbalah famously tells us that we all have two souls that battle for supremacy over us. There was of course the godly soul, the divine essence within, which encourages us to achieve and to accomplish purpose in life. And then there is the more animalistic self, the animal soul, which engenders lethargy and just listlessness and apathy. Says the Alter Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi in his Tanya, "Happiness is the essential element in the struggle between these two dynamics. When a person is sad, then they're likely to feel sluggish, indifferent, and more likely to cave than to the natural inclinations and the appetitive powers of the animal soul." By contrast, one who's happy is likely to feel energized, motivated. He maintains a better control of his life and he's going to look to accomplish and make his difference out there.

In other words, one of our souls' major purposes is to know and to love and to express our authentic selves. To live life, to be the person that we were meant to be, that we were created to be. God has a special plan for each of us, unique to our own individuality. Otherwise, frankly, we wouldn't be here. There's something that we can be that nobody else can be. There's something that we can become that no one before or after us could possibly become. The task is to recognize that you are uniquely special, that you have something to give, that you have some unique traits and talent that nobody, but nobody else shares in quite the same way. And that gift needs to blossom. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to everybody around you to honor your gifts by sharing your unique talent and joy with the world. And when you think about that, how can you not be happy?

The problem is, and this is one of the root causes for us feeling despondent, all too often we live our lives in the opinion of other people, rather than being true to our own selves and to what we might really know to be our real calling in life. And when we do that, that generates frustration. It engenders anxiety and maybe a sense of failure and yes, as a result, subsequently depression. If you're Jewish, your mother wants you to become a doctor. If you're French, she probably wants you to become a chef. If you're Brazilian, chances are she may want you to become a soccer player. But should other people define you? When you allow other people to keep you in a box, then you're limiting yourself and your self-perception is always going to change according to who is around. And then they will in turn be impinging on your real purpose and happiness. Being true to yourself means living with who you are and not in the opinion of others. That's how you discover your own inner happiness. Your mission is your destiny. It's you at your holiest, at your happiest, reaching your fullest potential away from the dictates and the confines of other people. So, you don't need to change who you are. You need to nurture what you are.

A wonderful anecdote they always tell about the father who has these two sons. One is the eternal optimist. He's always seeing always the good in everything. Everything makes him happy. And the other is really a pessimist. Nothing is good enough. Everything is despondency. And he feels he has to recalibrate his kids. So, he decides when they're out in school one day to go into the pessimist son's room and fill it with every imaginable toy. Surely, when he comes home this will lift his spirits. And he goes into his optimistic son's room and thought, "I'm going to set him straight a little bit." So, he fills the room, you'll pardon me, with horse manure. And then he waits, and the kids come home. And they waste little time going to their rooms, and after a little while he walks past the pessimistic son's room and he hears crying. And he can't believe it. "What is the problem?" He opens the door. "Son, what is your problem? All these toys." He says, "Dad, yes, exactly, all these toys. I'm going to have to read through all of the instructions. Some of them are going to break. The batteries are going to die. My friends are going to become jealous. I'm going to lose them over the course of time. It's so much hassle. It's just not worth it." And the father thinks, "Zei a brocha vegeda, this is just a waste of time." He leaves that room. He goes a little more hopefully past his optimistic son's room and he hears joy and laughter inside. And he opens the door and he sees his son standing jumping on top of this huge pile of horse manure. And he says, "Son, for goodness' sakes, what are you so happy about? It's just horse manure." And the kid looks at his father and says, "Dad, I just know there's got to be a pony in here somewhere."

You don't need to change who you are. You don't have to change your nature. You have to be in tune to it so that you can best nurture it in the right direction. When you condition yourself to be consciously aware of your every thought, of your every feeling, of your every action, then you're able to direct them rather than be controlled by them. And then you can utilize them even for what might otherwise be perceived as negative for something altogether positive. When you're being true to yourself, when you're being completely honest with what you feel, with what you deeply value, and what you truly desire, then you're able to communicate your feelings wholeheartedly both with yourself and with the other people around you, allowing that truth to be able to flow through you into the world around you. It doesn't happen overnight. Yes, it's a lifelong practice that we all have to regularly engage in. It requires commitment and recommitment. Moment to moment, you grow, you evolve. It takes discipline, it takes courage, it takes determination, but every single one of us can get there because frankly, that's where we're ultimately meant to be. That's where our destiny is. That's where our happiness lies.

There was a woman who woke up one morning, she looked into the mirror, she noticed she only had three hairs left on her head. And she got excited, and she declared, "I'm going to braid my hair today." And that's what she did, and she had a wonderful day. The next day she woke up, and she realized she only had two hairs left on her head. And she said, and she got excited, "Today I think I'm going to part my hair right down the middle." And that's exactly what she did, and she had a grand day. The next day she woke up, and she realizes she only has but one strand of hair left on her head. She got excited, she said, "Great, today I'm going to wear my hair in a ponytail." And that's what she did, and she had a fun day. And the next day she woke up, she looked in the mirror, and she notices that there wasn't a single hair left on her head. And she says, "Yes, today I don't have to fix my hair all together."

Attitude is everything. You could see the challenges of life as an obstacle or an opportunity. A pessimist sees the catastrophe even in every opportunity, and an optimist sees the opportunity even in a catastrophe. Life is all about getting excited when opportunity presents itself. It means seizing the minute, living in the present, launching yourself on every wave, finding your eternity in every single moment. The issue is that too many people would rather be certain they're miserable than risk being happy. So, there are two ways to see yourself. Either as a victim of your circumstances, your surrounds, or even indeed your upbringing, which in turn will make you sad, or someone determined to recreate themselves. And that sense of empowerment will make you happy. Everyone has one of two stories. The good news is you get to be the author. You choose which one to write.

Best-selling novelist Jack Canfield once recalled how he was driving home from work and he passed by a park where he noticed a whole bunch of kids playing some softball, Little League baseball game. And he decided to stop his car to sit down and watch behind the first baseline. And after a short period of time, he turned to the kid standing there and he says, "So, what's the score?" And the kid says, "We are losing 14-0." With this big huge grin on his face. And Jack says, "14-0? You don't look terribly despondent. You don't look terribly discouraged." And he looked up with a puzzled look on his face and said, "Why should we be discouraged? We haven't even been up to bat yet." Keep that in mind for a moment.

At the end of the 40-year travel of the Jews in the desert, after they have left Egypt, we read about all the stops they made on the way. The first stop the Jews made was in a place called Marah, which of course we know to mean bitter. So-called because at that point in time we're told the waters tasted bitter. The people complained and God gave instruction to Moses about what to do to sweeten the waters, etc. And then the Torah tells us curiously that in that moment God already gave them new commandments. He gave them extra mitzvahs to fulfill even prior to the giving of the Torah. He gave them Shabbos. He gave them the red heifer and other mitzvahs besides.

Analyzing this psychologically, what is apparent is that the Jewish people, a newborn nation, struggling with this newfangled experience, wandering aimlessly in this vast expanse of desert. They're listless. They're directionless. They have no sense of purpose. They're feeling bitter. Notwithstanding the tribulations that they endured in Egypt, at least there they knew what to anticipate, what to expect every single day. However difficult and challenging it may have been. Now they're gripped by the fear of the unknown. Sometimes a negative disposition can overwhelm a person to a point where it impacts on every dimension of the individual's existence. You can be so overcome with bitterness such that it can permeate the psyche and yes, even impact the physical senses. Some call it the fox syndrome. You know, a fox sees these succulent grapes hanging from a tree and he jumps up, keep trying to reach it, and he can't get to the grapes. So eventually he starts walking away in exhausted defeat and he thinks to himself, "Ah, they're probably not ripe anyway. They're probably not even edible. They're most likely sour. They would have made me sick." I mean, how many of us go through that experience? Many people when they can't get the grapes, the grapes suddenly become sour in their minds and that in turn sometimes turns into their reality.

When Hagar, Abraham's second wife, was chased from his home and she was sitting there wilting in the desert watching as her son Ishmael was withering away in the heat, the angel appeared to her and he reassured her that all will be good with her son and that he will survive. Says the Torah, "Then she lifted up her eyes and behold there was a well of water." Did the well of water just miraculously appear? Or was it there all of the time only because in her own sense and state of despondency, she just was oblivious to the blessing there before her eyes. Were the waters in Mara really bitter? Or was it the negative temperament of the people which resulted in every aspect of their experience looking, feeling, even tasting bitter? And that's precisely why God gives them then and there some immediate some commandments, shabbos, the red heifer, to give them a sense of purpose, to give them a mission, a goal, new meaning in their lives.

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind. Or as Abraham Lincoln once famously put it, "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." And by the way, that would explain an anomaly that we find in keeping with this same theme. When the Torah tells us after Mara, that place of Mara, they came to another place called Elim. Why was it so called? Because Elim is a date tree. The Jewish people encountered over there 70 wells and 12 date trees. And you've got to wonder, what is the significance of this? Who cares? And in fact, what on earth are 70 wells and 12 date trees going to do for the benefit of a population of over 2 and 1/2 million people? And yet therein lies the same point. After their spirits are lifted, they're given an altogether different perspective. Once the attitude is transformed, they're in a better frame of mind, and then even the small things in life loom large. Even the trivial takes on significance, and blessings can be sought even in the ordinary.

We experience negativity in our lives. That's a given. After that, it becomes a question of the extent that we allow for that to impact our reality to a point where everything becomes so disproportionately bleak, and our whole outlook becomes utterly absorbed by the experience. And then we can choose either succumb to all the negative feeling that comes in the wake of the adverse experience, or we can appreciate that our attitudes and our moods are our choice. Some people go through life happy that the glass is half full. Others may spend a lifetime lamenting that it's half empty. The bottom line is there is a glass of a certain volume of liquid in it. From there, it's up to you. And the bottom line is there's always more than one way to perceive any given situation. You can automatically respond or consciously respond. It's a choice point. You cannot always control what happens to you, but you can always control what happens inside of you. And here is the key. We are product of our choices, not of our circumstances. And that means that a happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes. And maybe that's why God chose to give them at this moment in time the law of Shabbos and the law of red heifer.

What is the significance? Well, I ask you, what is the significance of Shabbos? You know what it does more than anything else? Our rabbis, the Zohar tells us, "Me name is bochen kol yam and Shabbos adds blessing into the coming week." How so? Leaving all the mystical connotation aside, it's your moment in time that pulls you out of all the doldrums of the whole previous week. It's a moment in time when you can pause, when you can take a deep breath, when you can reflect in all the blessings around you. When we sing Shalom Aleichem, we welcome the angels, you can reflect on the angels around you as well, the real people that make a difference in your life. The people that contribute to your life, the people that you might otherwise typically ignore over the course of the week. You can pause and reflect on your family and realize that for all the other issues that might plague you during the course of the other 6 days, and for all the anxiety of the workplace, etc., here is your moment of respite to really appreciate, like we did the experiment at the beginning, that the blessings far, far outweigh the perplexities and the anxieties. That's what Shabbos does, and then it helps to recalibrate your thinking process. It helps to realign your whole attitude so that it instills blessing in the coming week, where hopefully you take that with you, you maintain that focus, and then your work week going forward becomes altogether different and more blessed. And similarly with regards to the red heifer, of course we know that was used to purify someone that came into contact with death. That reflects the reality of the negative that sometimes hits us very, very hard. This red heifer was the ashes, which reflect the idea of finality, mixed with spring water, which is the idea of picking yourself up and moving on once more. You can't expect to prevent negative feelings altogether, and you can't expect to experience positive feelings all of the time. The law of emotional choice directs us to acknowledge our feelings, but also to refuse to get stuck in the negative ones, and to focus on going forward.

So, these journeys that we read about in the Torah, they're not just some little bit of geographical information that we're given about the Jews of yesteryear. The hard fact is that we're all taking that same journey in life, navigating our own deserts, working our own way to our own promised lands. They're life lessons reminding us that even when the going gets tough, sometimes unbearably so, it's important to tell yourself, like that boy in the aforementioned story, "Discouraged? Why should I be discouraged? I haven't even been up to bat yet." That can make all the difference in winning the game of life.

Now, of course, many people will argue that I would be so much happier if I had more of life's trappings. If only I'd be more successful, then I'd be in a better place. Then I'd be much happier. That's sheer, utter gibberish and nonsense. You know what they say, "Whoever says money can't buy happiness doesn't know where to shop." It's also said that love is more important than money. But try paying your bills with a hug. Contrary to popular belief, happiness doesn't come from fame or fortune or other people or material possessions. The richest person in the world can be utterly miserable while somebody living in some third-world country can be blissfully happy. There are a lot of people out there who will tell you, "I'm happy." And we might believe them to be so. But then, why is it that if you look a little bit beneath the surface, you'll always see them so frustrated, so agitated, so discontented? There's a popular saying, "The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything they have." You'll have, again, a deeper sense of happiness and satisfaction if you count your blessings instead of yearning for what you don't have. To put it in the famous words of our sages, "Wealth is determined by being satisfied with your lot."

Everyone works at their own pace, so why compare yourself to somebody else? If you think you're better than someone else, then you're going to have an unhealthy sense of superiority. If you think someone else is better than you, then you're going to be walking around feeling bad about yourself. Stop looking everywhere else and concentrate on your own lot. You'll be a lot happier if you just focus on your own reality. In fact, the more you yearn for what you don't have, the more discontented you will feel, the more frustrated you'll be, the less happy you'll be. And ironically, it's precisely that which gets in the way of your ability to achieve success. You see, again, pop contrary to popular misconception, success is not what brings happiness, happiness is what brings success.

What does that mean? The Talmud tells us rabbis, some of them, prior to giving a special class to their disciples, would often tell a humorous anecdote. And the significance of this would be, as Hasidism explains, in order to relax the heart, in order to open the mind, in order to broaden the horizons of the people sitting there. When you are in a happier frame of mind, you function better, you absorb better, you think better. When the rabbis tell us joy penetrates all obstacles, what they mean is that for all the things you believe you cannot do, for all the obstacles you create in your own mind, happiness enables you to transcend that, to rise above it. Happiness brings success, because when you are in that better place, you can go on to achieve greater things. So, the bottom line is always remember happiness is a choice. This world is made up of only two types of people, those who choose to be happy and those who choose to be unhappy. Real happy people are happy because they choose to be happy. They make themselves happy. They maintain a positive outlook on life and they remain at peace with themselves.

How do you go on to become that sort of happy person? What separates one from another? Well, happy people have habits that enrich their lives. By way of one sort of example, they just do things differently. Happy people don't bear grudges. They understand that it's better to forgive and forget than let the negative emotions crowd out their positive feelings. I'm guessing that if I went around this room right now and I asked how many people, if they really thought about it, still harbor some kind of issue or grudge or whatever it is against somebody else, we'd get a pretty high proportion. It may not be something that's consuming your mind all the time, but it certainly does when you happen to pass that guy in shul or you happen to meet that guy in the bakery or whatever else besides. And that's just not letting the little things go. Holding on to grudges drags you down. It kind of brings all sort of detrimental effect on your well-being. It can even cause all kinds of anxiety and stress. Why let somebody else who has wronged you have that power over you?

You know, Simon Wiesenthal, somebody approached him apparently in a DP camp or after towards the end of the war and asked him to borrow $10. No chump change in those days. And he said, "I'm doing a deal on the black market. I'll give it back to you next week Monday." He gave him the $10. Next week Monday came and went, never saw the guy. Week, 2 weeks, a month, 2 months, 8 months later, the guy resurfaces. "I'm leaving the camp in a couple of days. I'm here to give you your $10 back." Wiesenthal says to him, "No, no. Keep the money. Better you should have it and give it back to me than I should change my opinion about you." You know, he was a wise man, but he made a mistake in this one instance. Why not let things go? If you set your grudges free, you'll gain a clear conscious and more energy to enjoy the better things in life. As the Tzemach Tzedek once commented, "Adults hold grudges. Children don't hold grudges." And he asked the question, "But adults are mature. Children are immature. Surely it should be the other way When you're immature, you hold on. When you're mature, you let go. And he answered, "Because children would rather be happy than be right. Adults would rather insist they're right than be happy." So, it doesn't matter. The grudges, they drag me down, it makes me feel despondent. I don't care. I'll hold it as long as I can because I'm right. You want to be happy, go rediscover the child within.

And even when you feel you've been dealt a curveball in life, there's value in simply accepting the fact that sometimes life may not be fair from a human perspective, anyway. And when you accept that, then you'll be more at peace with yourself. Instead of obsessing over how unfair you believe your life to be, just focus on what you can control and change it for the better. There was an elderly woman who was a spinster all her life, and she was terribly bitter about it, such that when she passed away at the ripe old age of 97, she had one request in her will. "There shall be no male pallbearers carrying my coffin. If they didn't want to take me out while I was alive, they're not taking me out now when I'm gone."

Happy people have the ability to choose their destinies. They don't let circumstances dictate their lives and tell them how they should live. Being in control of one's own life brings positive feelings and a great sense of self-worth. And that leads me on to something else to consider in this context. There's an expression, "Woe to the wicked and woe to the neighbor." And what that means in this context is to surround yourself with happy people. The grouches, they're always going to pull you down. You know, when they say it's that it's lonely at the top, it's also quite lonely at the bottom. And when they say misery loves company, well, discontented people are always going to go looking for someone to moan to in the hope that they'll share their despondency and join them there at the bottom. I'm not suggesting that means that you should dump your friends. But it does attest to a truth that what you become and what you feel is subconsciously being affected by what surrounds you. It doesn't mean you should judge unhappy people, not at all. It doesn't mean you should ostracize them. Don't. Do you remember Sesame Street? Oscar the Grouch? One of my favorite characters. I mean, he's grouchy. It is who he is and no one can make him change, but that didn't stop his numerous Sesame Street friends regularly inviting him to see and engage with the world differently, even as they know what his response is going to be. So, you don't want to ostracize the Oscars of your life. On the contrary, try to impact them. Look to lift them up. But if you want to be happy, then you have to make the conscious decision to choose your company wisely. It's important to surround yourself with positive energy, with optimistic people where you can then gravitate towards the happiness. The more positive energy that you have around you, the better you will feel about yourself.

And here's another point to consider and a very, very important one in this regard. We all know about the effects of what happens to our body when we exercise. We build stamina, we build more muscle, we feel how our daily activities like climbing stairs becomes easier if we exercise regularly. And the classic line that we like to use is there are endorphins that are released. Something we like to throw about in order to make ourselves sound really smart without necessarily knowing what it means. But here's what actually happens. If you start exercising, your brain recognizes this as a moment of stress. Your heart pressure increases. The brain thinks you're either fighting the enemy or fleeing from it. So, in order to protect yourself and your brain from stress, you release the certain protein called BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor. And this BDNF has a protective and also reparative element to your memory neurons and it acts as a reset switch. It makes you feel good. And that's why when you exercise, you feel good. You feel happy. Exercise functions as a reset switch for your brain. The somewhat scary part is that it has a very similar and addictive effect like morphine, heroin, or nicotine. The only difference is of course that exercise is actually good for us.

Guess what? There's something in Judaism that works exactly the same way. You know there's only one time in the year when it's halakhically forbidden to learn Torah. The ninth of Av is the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. It's the day when our temples were destroyed and as such we're legally bound to avoid those things that might otherwise generate joy and amongst those things is learning Torah. With the exception of studying certain aspects of the Talmud etc. that are distinctly sad, otherwise we are forbidden, prohibited from learning. This in keeping with the verse in Psalms that says the edicts of God are just and gladden the hearts. My father, a blessed memory, wrote to me regularly during my first year when I was studying abroad. This is in the days before email. This is in 1983. Phone calls were still very expensive and in one of his letters he wrote something to the effect of I hope that you are in a state of happiness. And if you're unhappy, then that's a sign that you're not learning properly citing the aforementioned verse in Psalms. You see Torah study, mitzvot, all things which fall under the category of edicts of God, they are your spiritual endorphins. You know it to be true. Many of you will have sat through a really good stimulating shear or an inspiring Torah class or whatever else besides and you walk away feeling uplifted. We call it inspired, but that's really the spiritual endorphins functioning as the reset switch for your souls. And I have to stress I'm not advocating giving up exercise for a Torah class. I'm a big I am a genuinely big believer in exercise. Yes, I have a personal trainer who does Muay Thai extreme martial arts with me twice a week. It keeps me sane, especially living in the United Kingdom. But that's not enough. And I'm not here just standing here to advocate about Torah learning. Although of course that's what I'm doing. I'm standing here to talk to you about the pursuit of happiness and I'm telling you categorically as a Jew part and parcel of your pursuit of happiness necessitates your incorporating some spiritual endorphins for your soul.

Someone in Yeshiva once wrote to the Rebbe that he really couldn't get into his learning. It was an ongoing struggle. He just couldn't do it. So the Rebbe instructed him, "Open a book and learn 5 minutes every day, not a minute more." Close it, no matter what, even if you're inclined to want to do a minute more. And that's what he did. Every day, 5 minutes. Do you know after a while those 5 minutes became an indispensable part of his life. Of course later over the course of time that became 6 and 7 and a lot more after that. Today he's a successful businessman, but he can't go without his daily learning. Yes, Torah learning like morphine, heroin, and nicotine can have a very real addictive element to it. But like exercise it's actually good for us.

So finally, here's the question. After all said and done, great. I heard what you had to say Yitzchak Schochet, but I still don't feel happy. I hear the arguments, maybe they appeal to my sense of intellect. They make sense, but it doesn't change my reality within my own heart. What am I to do? Two words, fake it. And you're thinking, "Why should I fake it? What could possibly be the point in that? Aren't we talking about being true to ourself, being true to who I am?" Well, for one thing, when you fake it, it always annoys people. When you see someone smiling first thing in the morning and you look at them, "How are you?" "Oh, I am fantastic." Come on, you admit it. It makes you a little bit agitated. Like, "Why are you smiling? What's there to be so happy about?" You're kind of jealous. Chances are they're faking it. But, the real point is this, positive feedback loop. Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are rooted back as inputs in part of a chain of cause and effect, which forms a circuit or a loop, and that can then be said to feed back into itself. In other words, like the rabbis tell us in Ethics of the Fathers, that one good deed begets another. By definition, what you do impacts on your mind, on your heart, and on your soul, whether you like it or not. Right now, you're not in the mood of doing a mitzvah or good deed. You're not in the mood of learning. Do it anyway. Don't let what happens to you define how you happen for others. The feel-good factor that will be generated by what you do, not to mention that deeper soul satisfaction, will then want you want to do another of the mitzvah and yet another one after that.

And to illustrate the point, the Chassidim came before their master, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the Alter Rebbe, and they said to him, "There's a guy in the shul over there, and he's sitting with his tallis over his head, and he's rocking to and fro as though he's the most pious man in the world. We know what he's really like. We know what he gets up to when he leaves the shul. He's faking it. Get him to stop." And the Alter Rebbe pondered a few moments and then said the following. There is a famous Mishna that says that when a person mocks a blind man or a deaf-mute or a by copying their gestures, that person will not die from this world until the same thing happens to them. It's harsh words, but the Mishna is referencing the idea of measure for measure, underscoring the broader principle of how to be sensitive towards another, especially disabled people, et cetera. Continued the Alter Rebbe, "We have a fundamental principle that whatever applies in the negative applies multifold in the positive. So, if somebody pretends that he's a he's not going to leave this world until that happens to him. Then how much more so when someone is pretending that he's a pious, righteous man, well, guess what? He's not going to depart from this world until he actually becomes a pious and righteous man. That's the reality. Man is comprised of three primary components, machshava, thought, dibbur, your speech, and ma'aseh, your action. And our ongoing objective in life is to ensure that all three are in sync. Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. Maybe right now your mind is consumed with negative thoughts that pull you down and deny you happiness. But when you fake it, the mind can be tricked and you can balance your life on that little hack. In the meantime, you're going to learn what you need in order to turn and that pretend happiness into the real deal. Yes, it takes a little bit of nerve. We were born to be happy, not perfect. So, right now you're not feeling happy? Fake it until you make it. You're not being dishonest with yourself. In fact, you're unleashing your true inner self. And so, therefore, friends, remember, smiling is the way your soul says hello. For every minute that you are dissatisfied, disgruntled, displeased, you're denying yourself 60 seconds of happiness. And even when the good things come to a close, don't cry because they have ended. Smile and be happy because it happened. And above all else, remember that to find true happiness, you need to open your heart to love. Love where you are. Love what you do. Love other people and above all else, love yourself too. Joy penetrates all obstacles. It pierces every boundary. As the Rebbe said time and again, true joy is all that we need to break the walls of this exile and merit the coming of Messiah. And if that's the way it could work on a global scale, how much more so can it work in our own individual and personal lives? May we indeed learn to experience it in our lives. May we choose, because it is a choice, to experience it in our lives and thus ensuring personal redemption in our own lives and by extension collective redemption throughout our world. Amen. >> [applause]