A PERFECT PEACE?

A point from the weekly D’var Malchus with a relevant message. * This week: with so many details in life, how can we stay calm?

By Aryeh Kirshnzaft

The mother’s list consisted of: diapers for Yossi’s daycare center, the bags outside, the floor in the little one’s room, the fleishige dishes, putting the colored wash in the dryer, finishing all the urgent paperwork, getting the living room ready for the shiur, calling Zalman’s teacher, plan tomorrow afternoon with Chaya, supper, showers, Mushka’s homework, talk with the mashpia, ask Chaim whether he ordered gas, ask the Rebbe for a bracha that I manage to get through this list calmly so that I have patience left for the children!

The father’s list: find out what happened today with Zalman, take out the mail, take the bags in from the porch, finish Rambam, find the Tikkun Leil Shavuos, finish yesterday’s list, deposit the check, tell Mendy that I will not make it to him and will only have time tomorrow, Yossi’s diapers for the daycare center, prepare the shiur, finish dealing with the gas, enter the house calmly!

What was the world lacking? Menucha! With so many details, the person is pulled in so many directions and it is hard to be relaxed.

***

Calm, relaxed, serene, tranquil. We need this at all times and especially in our times. People are willing to do anything in order to obtain some peace of mind in life but they don’t know how to do it. It is the vagaries of time and place which create the multiplicity of details. This is also the reason that it is so hard to achieve peace because the time and space that create the details are always there, at all times and in all places. There is nowhere to escape to.

Most people try to obtain peace of mind by running away from the details. They try to change settings, get out of their routines, i.e. they try to change the details of life and achieve serenity that way. This approach is not effective because the entire world consists of details upon details. Running away from details not only is not relaxing but it adds more and more details and contributes to a lack of tranquility. This failure leads people to the mistaken conclusion that they need to escape even more. This leads to an endless dizziness of experiences and emotional upheavals that only increase the stress, lack of success, and frustration.

Where is true equanimity to be found?

***

The world began to suffer from lack of menucha from the moment Hashem created it. The more details in creation, the less menucha in the world. The first time the world felt restful was on Shabbos. Suddenly, all the details felt they have a united purpose. Comes Shabbos, comes rest. At Mattan Torah, menucha was made whole and from then on, every created being feels what its goal is. The only way to contend with the problem of details is to discover that all the details are actually one point.

As the Rebbe puts it in this week’s D’var Malchus for Shavuos: When a person does not feel the purpose and goal in his life (that “I was created to serve my Maker”), he cannot be truly restful and settled since the changes in time and place and the multiplicity of details and sub-details in his life cause him constant lack of calm which “breaks” him. It is when he senses the goal, the purpose and intention, lying within all the details, that this leads him to menucha, which transcends the movement and change of the details of life.

Our job is to live serenely and reveal the menucha throughout the world. If we just knew how to look with Geula eyes that show us the intention and purpose of all the details, we would see that everything is one point.

***

Now, let us rewrite the list. We don’t need to erase our previous list, just instill the point in all the details. The first thing we will write on top is “my purpose and intention in all my thoughts, speech and action is to fulfill G-d’s will and to bring about the complete hisgalus immediately.” Then we can get down to the details.

Bring diapers to the daycare center for Yossi and don’t forget this is the ratzon Hashem! Clean the floor in the little one’s room which is also the ratzon Hashem, the pile of fleishige dishes and the clothing for the dryer are also the ratzon Hashem. Every detail, even the smallest, starting from changing a diaper and ending with learning Torah and davening, is part of “I was created to serve my Maker.”

That is how the revised list, of someone who has learned and internalized the D’var Malchus of BaMidbar-Shavuos and has started to live Geula, looks. At the end of a list like this, there probably won’t be a reminder to ask the Rebbe for a bracha for patience, but a reminder to report to the Rebbe that everything was done calmly.

In the Geula, there will be true and complete menucha in all the details of the world. The Rebbe MH”M reveals to us that already now, we can live it.

Hatzlacha!