"For People who are at Least Somewhat Desperate #2"

 

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)