You Can't Have it All -Part 1
תּוֹעֲבַת יְהוָה, עִקְּשֵׁי-לֵב; וּרְצוֹנוֹ, תְּמִימֵי דָרֶךְ.
20. Those who are perverse in heart are an abomination of the Lord, but He desires those who are persistent in their way.
When a chacham commits his energies to some goal or ideal he should understand that choosing this path will exclude him from being able to pursue a different one. For example, someone who is committing himself to a life of learning cannot simultaneously live a life in pursuit of physical pleasure where he is constantly out partying. He must understand that in order to achieve anything he must be willing to abandon certain lifestyles.
However, there exists a fantasy in most of us that we can have it all; we can have the chachma, the party lifestyle, the athlete lifestyle etc… Thus, even when we commit our energies to specific goals, our hearts cause us to stray from them because of this fantasy.
I have learned, that one way of breaking down fantasies is to delve into the fantasy to show why the fantasy is impossible and will only bring unhappiness. The more I review these ideas the weaker the fantasy becomes:
Breaking Down the Fantasy
There are two reasons for why the fantasy can never be realized. The first reason is that some of the paths themselves are mutually exclusive. A person cannot pursue a life of chachma and a life of instant gratification because any intellectual endeavor requires patience and hard work which are incompatible with a life centered on finding immediate pleasure. Achieving the status as the best athlete requires a preoccupation with the body that cannot concurrently exist with a preoccupation with understanding the mind.
The second reason why a person must abandon some lifestyles is that practically a person has limited energy and simply can't do it all. A person needs to decide where to invest his energies and where to withdraw. Otherwise, he will spread himself too thin, never achieving the results that he desires in any area.
Abandoning this Fantasy
One of the the things that makes it difficult to abandon the fantasy that "I can have it all", is the pain a person will experience when he imagines the lifestyle that he must give up. This pain will be magnified because instead of having a realistic perspective on the abandoned lifestyle, a person will only imagine the positive things associated with the lifestyle.
For example, if someone has to decide whether he should give up his pursuit of the "basketball player" lifestyle, he will immediately feel pain because his mind will naturally be drawn to consider the exciting games, the fans cheering, the proud parents that he won't be experiencing. In his mind he will ask himself "how can I bear to give these things up?". At this moment the full days of practices, the hard work, the pain of losing etc. won't come into his mind. Every lifestyle has drawbacks, but a person's imagination completely ignores that.
In other words, the person always has a very distorted imagination of what a lifestyle will be like. But once this person dedicates his life to basketball, he will inevitably experience the pains first hand and will discover that the lifestyle that he has dedicated his life to is not all that what he imagined it to be.
The key is to recognize the negative aspects of lifestyles before experiencing them i.e. when you are thinking about whether to pursue the lifestyle or when you are feeling the pain of letting the lifestyle go. Hopefully, this will let you make a more intelligent decision about where to invest your energies and not to let the conflict that you're fantasies create, cause you to make a wrong decision.
20. Those who are perverse in heart are an abomination of the Lord, but He desires those who are persistent in their way.
When a chacham commits his energies to some goal or ideal he should understand that choosing this path will exclude him from being able to pursue a different one. For example, someone who is committing himself to a life of learning cannot simultaneously live a life in pursuit of physical pleasure where he is constantly out partying. He must understand that in order to achieve anything he must be willing to abandon certain lifestyles.
However, there exists a fantasy in most of us that we can have it all; we can have the chachma, the party lifestyle, the athlete lifestyle etc… Thus, even when we commit our energies to specific goals, our hearts cause us to stray from them because of this fantasy.
I have learned, that one way of breaking down fantasies is to delve into the fantasy to show why the fantasy is impossible and will only bring unhappiness. The more I review these ideas the weaker the fantasy becomes:
Breaking Down the Fantasy
There are two reasons for why the fantasy can never be realized. The first reason is that some of the paths themselves are mutually exclusive. A person cannot pursue a life of chachma and a life of instant gratification because any intellectual endeavor requires patience and hard work which are incompatible with a life centered on finding immediate pleasure. Achieving the status as the best athlete requires a preoccupation with the body that cannot concurrently exist with a preoccupation with understanding the mind.
The second reason why a person must abandon some lifestyles is that practically a person has limited energy and simply can't do it all. A person needs to decide where to invest his energies and where to withdraw. Otherwise, he will spread himself too thin, never achieving the results that he desires in any area.
Abandoning this Fantasy
One of the the things that makes it difficult to abandon the fantasy that "I can have it all", is the pain a person will experience when he imagines the lifestyle that he must give up. This pain will be magnified because instead of having a realistic perspective on the abandoned lifestyle, a person will only imagine the positive things associated with the lifestyle.
For example, if someone has to decide whether he should give up his pursuit of the "basketball player" lifestyle, he will immediately feel pain because his mind will naturally be drawn to consider the exciting games, the fans cheering, the proud parents that he won't be experiencing. In his mind he will ask himself "how can I bear to give these things up?". At this moment the full days of practices, the hard work, the pain of losing etc. won't come into his mind. Every lifestyle has drawbacks, but a person's imagination completely ignores that.
In other words, the person always has a very distorted imagination of what a lifestyle will be like. But once this person dedicates his life to basketball, he will inevitably experience the pains first hand and will discover that the lifestyle that he has dedicated his life to is not all that what he imagined it to be.
The key is to recognize the negative aspects of lifestyles before experiencing them i.e. when you are thinking about whether to pursue the lifestyle or when you are feeling the pain of letting the lifestyle go. Hopefully, this will let you make a more intelligent decision about where to invest your energies and not to let the conflict that you're fantasies create, cause you to make a wrong decision.
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