Matos Masei 5786 – David Lemmer

The combination of these two Parshiyot is one to behold. To preface this essay I will start with this: I sit down to write a paper each week as my journal, blended into the weekly Parshah. The lessons that have been instilled into my heart and mind throughout the last few days are directly linked to the position I hold in life at this moment. Whatever you are reading right now is exactly to the point where my life has brought me to. Much like a Bar Mitzvah boy can say that “All my years have led me to this moment,” so too can I say that “Everything I know today is a result of accumulating prior years and thoughts.”

We, as humans, in the physical realm we call Gashmi, all have one thing we have in common. We recognize patterns. To prove this point I will ask, “Why do you know that the sun is real?” Think about it. “Why did you determine that it must be real?” The answer is because it is a recurring pattern! You look up to the sky during the daytime, and there it is. You look away for a few moments and look back, and still there it is. It repeats itself constantly, and since it does, it equates to the truth. Any repetitive pattern becomes fact in our lives. The sun is real because it is always here.

What other patterns do we constantly see in our lives? As I began, these thoughts I write on a weekly basis for over ten years now have become a repetitive pattern in my life. This has become a fact in my essence, and just as the sun is real before my eyes, this part of me is considered a fact of “me.” If someone were to ask, “How do you know that you are a writer?” I do not even need to answer with words. All I do is point and they will see. So if someone asks me, “Who are you?” I can comfortably answer, “I am the result of my patterns.” As the Sefer Hachinuch writes in Mitzvah 16, “A person is produced based on his production.” The person you become depends on the reality you see before you.

A pattern that repeats itself is something that you see over and over again in your life. Like the sun, when you repeat a negative belief about yourself to yourself ten times a day, this pattern solidifies itself into the fabric of “your” world, and it is your reality. You will start seeing and anticipating this pattern wherever you go. It becomes so entrenched into your life that you have a hard time seeing any other reality besides this one. Someone who is deeply depressed, or someone struggling with anxiety or addiction, will be able to attest to this idea. Their fears and struggles repeat themselves so often that they do not know of a possibility for any other way for life. “This is true because I see it all day!”

This recognition leads us to see how important patterns are in our lives. And since it is so, it is up to us to develop, integrate, and implant new meaningful patterns into our lives. Things that you see every single day of your life, just like the sun, so they become real, hard facts.

“But I do not know what I want to do with my life!” Oh, the many times I have asked this question to myself and how many more have I heard others asking me this question. I admire this stage of life very much since it is likened to a brand new baby who has the entire world ready before them. But the reason this question is so familiar is because we are clouded by a reality that we cannot see out of. We are so entrenched in patterns that make us see the world from a particular point of view that we get angry when we see someone thriving. We ask ourselves, “How can it be that so and so is smiling? Can they not see that the world is falling apart?!” We become upset not because we envy them, but because we so dearly want to have that life and simply cannot see beyond our cloud.

But our cloud was created through the patterns of our life. The things we do all day long, the environment we surround ourselves within, the noise of the world we entertain, they all contribute to the daily consumption of your mind and heart. It is no wonder that one who listens to news, politics, sports, or even fashion will only see what they train themselves to see all day long.

It is pretty obvious and self-evident that if you were to place yourself in a room for three days surrounded by screens that are blasting all that is dirty and defiled, that once you leave that room the world you see, the men and women who pass by your sight, will be suspect of the behavior you have just immersed yourself in for three days. You will envision them the way you have trained your mind to think, and even if they are completely innocent your judgment will conclude that they are up to no good.

So if we are products of our patterns, why not change them? For that we have to figure out what we want to do with our lives so that we can implement patterns that will lead us in that direction. We want to start doing things every single day that bring our vision closer to reality. We may have an idea that will take ten years to evolve into maturity, but we still have to do the grunt work up until then. It will not simply fall into your lap in ten years just because you once had a thought of it years ago. You probably will not even remember that you had this thought if you are not going to do something about it.

So for this we need to create a vision. It is simple. Name three things that you will be in ten years from now. I will go first. 1) Teacher. 2) On top of my game all the time. And 3) Build something great! Now it is your turn. 1), 2), 3). Wonderful! Good job, and good luck! Now you start implementing patterns into your life that will lead you in this direction.

There is something I must stress at this point. People get inspired to do very big things. For example they decide that they will finish Shnayim Mikra each week. This is a beautiful concept. Now they break it down and say, “I will do one part of the Parshah each day for fifteen minutes, and so it will get done.” This is the typical failing point. How many times have we decided that this year we are going to the gym each day? And were you able to stick to it?

The reason is that we need time to break into a new pattern. At the moment you are inspired to take on this challenge you are capable of doing more than just fifteen minutes per day. Actually, for the first few days this vision is still burning inside of you. This burning vision has the ability to have you focus and finish the entire Parshah in one sitting. So why are we limiting ourselves, and especially our burning desire right at the get-go? Halacha states that when we start saying V’ten Bracha on Pesach we have a period of 90 prayers that during this time if we are questioning ourselves if we said the proper words we must repeat our entire tefillah. This is due to the fact that we need time to break in a new pattern. But in the same breath we learn that if someone sat down for an hour and repeated the first 17 words of the Bracha ninety times we are exempt from this ruling and we do not have to restart our Tefillah.

So if we are excited about those three things to be part of our lives and we wish to start implementing them into our daily patterns, why should we postpone it? It is crucial that the first few days are solely dedicated to this purpose. This way the fire extends and already has a solid foundation. Think about it. If you were to apply fifteen minutes a day for 40 days, when those forty days are up you will have 10 hours completed of this pattern. And we all know that forty days is a long time, and in most cases the inspiration is already gone after a week or so. But if it is ten hours of foundational work that you are looking to implement, why not do 2.5 hours a day for the first week?

This concept is described in the Gemara Megillah 6b, “Yagati U’matzati, Taamin. I toiled and I found, believe.” This vision that you are creating is one of belief. “I believe that in ten years I can be a person with those three character traits.” This belief needs to become a reality somehow. How? Through toil. Physical labor and earthly matters are the vehicle to propel you to realizing your vision. It will only be after the toil that you will find, and then you arrive to “Taamin.” You will believe your belief.

It is time for the old patterns of actions, words, and thoughts that have not propelled us forward to be reevaluated. “Do I truly need my hours of scrolling?” “Will this gossip chatter grant me true liking with my manager?” We know the answer and we knew it for a long time already, but it is now time to do our purpose with meaning and purpose.

“Eileh Masei,” these are the travels of the children of Israel. It is easy to get lost in a corn maze, but when we have a clue to the direction of the exit, being lost is not permanent. We check to see the placement of the sun as we enter and use it as our location tracker. We create little external wake up reminders that will keep us moving forward in our pattern creation even as we are still stuck in the maze. The inspiration dies down eventually. The vigor we felt when we started may fade, but we still get up and do it every single day because we know that there is a guiding light we are aiming to achieve. We may not be seeing it, and at times life can create circumstances that cloud us in new thoughts, but deep in our hearts we know that if we look for our sun we will find it behind the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)