The
Question:
I don’t
understand what the Yosher Divrei Emes meant when he
wrote that the worst thing, הרע הגדול, is to fall into depression and gloom.
Then right after that, he continues and says that those states come about
because of arrogance and a false, exaggerated sense of self.
I can’t
understand the connection between them. It seems that depression is the
opposite of pride. Depressed people are broken people, not prideful people.
The
Admor, Shlita, answers:
Rav Asher
Freund, זי"ע, taught us that a person generally lives his 70 years with
either excessive pride or despair. או גאוה או יאוש
Despair comes
as a result of excessive pride. If things don’t bring me happiness, enabling me
to be prideful, then I find myself settling into despair.
For example,
when a person walks into a room full of people and someone recognizes him and
greets him, he feels prideful. If suddenly, his best friend doesn’t pay any
attention to him, his whole mood falls. And then if, right after that, somebody
who he knows a little bit smiles at him, he again has his mood lifted.
He feels like
a passenger on a mountain train, going up towards the heavens and down towards
the pits.
There is a
third way: הכנעה, submission. That’s where he understands that all the
honor that’s given him is a gift fromShamyim.
The evidence
for this is when he is not given recognition, and yet he remains all the time
attached to the Creator. And then even when this is taken from
him, he knows that it is also from Hashem, and it’s wondrous in his eyes.
It’s the
periods when things don’t go for him that bring about “The stone despised by
the builders has become the cornerstone.”
Contrary to
this, a person would often rather be in sadness and despair, rather than give
submission. With despair, he at least has something to hold on to, whereas when
he submits, he needs to release to the Creator everything that he had a handle
on.
The Pri
HaAretz in Parshas Shoftim points out that the point of emunah that
a person has in Yisborach is also something that comes from
Him.
The proof is
from the homeless people. Once I said in front of Reb Asher that I thought that
the homeless people are the most downtrodden. Reb Asher then said that actually
they are at the summit of self-pride. Just try to motivate them to any kind of
order or stability and they will come up with thousands of entangled emotional
reasons that have to be taken into account. (They cannot, by themselves, reach
the point of emunah).
“Release my
soul from confinement, to acknowledge Your Name.” (Tehillim 142:8)
