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Questions You Thought We Were Afraid You'd Ask
and answers you've been waiting to hearMoshe Speiser
Questions You Thought We Were Afraid You'd Ask
When Jewish teens are looking into Judaism and asking important questions, how do you answer them? How can you teach and inspire them?
This honest and Torah-true book gives answers to many challenging questions that newly religious and questioning teens have about Judaism. Today's teens have questions. Today's teens need answers.
Book Excerpt from Questions You Thought We Were Afraid You'd Ask
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Questions You Thought We Were Afraid You'd Ask
Jewish Teens! Get honest, clear, Torah-true answers to your questions & gain clarity on issues that are important to Jewish teenagers - and you.
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Why Can’t I Have the Best of Both Worlds?
Because you deserve “the” best
Many people find it difficult to practice self-control and need to rationalize their desires to have a good time. A common line is “I want to have fun and enjoy myself now, and I will just have to make do with a smaller portion in the next world.” (Isn’t even a small portion a lot when it lasts forever?) Or they say that they will have fun now while young, and later they will pull their lives together and straighten out. In short, “Why can’t I have the best of both worlds?” There are a few reasons why such approaches are not honest or worthwhile.First, let’s define the word “fun,” as it has different connotations to different people. Fun is doing something that gives one pleasure, amusement, enjoyment, or a thrill. We can divide fun into three basic categories: meaningful, meaningless, and dangerous.
A meaningful fun experience can be a family outing, in which family members enjoy one another’s company and build a stronger connection with each other. The same is true when talking to friends, which creates bonding and nurtures relationships. Playing ball or exercising with the intention of keeping healthy would also be included in this category.
A meaningless fun experience could be, for example, going on a roller coaster. For some people that is a way to have fun, but it has no meaning to it. Though it won’t be bad for your future (unless you fall out or scream so loud that you ruin your voice), it does nothing for your existence other than giving you a fleeting thrill.
Dangerous fun experiences include promiscuous behavior, using drugs or alcohol, dangerous driving, or driving without a license. Although these activities may seem like fun, they are likely to damage one’s future.
Just about everyone needs to have some fun. It helps us to recharge and enables us to function properly. Teenagers especially need to have fun in their lives, as this helps them balance their emotional equilibrium. However, fun should be had in the right proportion and in a way that is helpful to one’s future. Otherwise, it becomes counterproductive.
Meaningful fun experiences create feelings of satisfaction, self-worth, happiness, and fulfillment in a person.
Meaningless fun experiences leave a person with an emptiness, an inner feeling of “what was the point of all this?”
A group of people was once asked what they would do if they only had a week to live. Most said that they would spend the time with their families, indicating that people would rather do something meaningful in their last moments than to “eat, drink, and be merry.” People inherently feel that they should get as many meaningful experiences as possible during their lifetime.
When a person is young, he thinks that there is a lot of time left for him to take care of the meaningful stuff, so right now he can indulge in meaningless or dangerous fun. For some strange, unknown reason, many teenagers feel they are invincible and nothing bad will ever happen to them (even while driving intoxicated at 100 mph).
Let us examine people who are overinvolved in transient fun and see if the fun they are experiencing is really leading them to a happy life.
Worldly pleasures are really mostly in the imagination. We see something that looks attractive and enticing, e.g., a girl/boy, a fancy new car, stylish clothing, a trip around the world, or whatever, and we feel lacking when we don’t have it. We imagine having it and enjoy it in our minds. Then we try to acquire it. When we do get it, we feel that we filled our “lack” and that gives us gratification.
That satisfaction lasts only for a short time, for two reasons. First, the acquisition is not intrinsically satisfying, since physical things can never satisfy the whole person (ruach and neshamah). Second, now that we have it, the excitement and satisfaction of pursuing and filling this void is over. We will need to find something else to run after. That is why people are not satisfied with what they have — the satisfaction of filling the lack is over, and what they have isn’t really something that creates happiness. So they imagine that the next thing will be the really great “one” that will make them happy. “If only I get this, then I will be happy.” So people are constantly pursuing new sources of pleasure — the old stuff just doesn’t do it anymore.
If getting overinvolved in meaningless physicality will not bring happiness, why do it? Why wait until later, wasting your life on emptiness, when you can lead a productive and intrinsically happy life now?! Your adult life is based on your youth - why build a shaky foundation? These are questions worthy of your serious consideration.
There is another reason why the philosophy of having the best of both worlds is not worthwhile. Remember a time when you were in a lot of pain. It could have been a serious cut, an electric shock, whatever. Then imagine that following consumption of a specific enjoyable food, you would inevitably reexperience that pain. If that pain was really an intense one, it is doubtful you would eat that particular food, no matter how good it tastes. Even if you were to eat it, you probably would not enjoy it that much, knowing what is sure to follow. Conversely, if each time you experienced some discomfort you would be rewarded with an enormous sum of money, you might find the payoff worthwhile. The analogy is obvious. There are consequences to our actions.
Why don’t we have a fear of the pains or a desire for the pleasures of the next world? Since we never experienced the pain of Gehinnom or the pleasure of being close to God, we don’t perceive them as something real, and therefore we don’t take them into account.
In order to make an honest assessment of whether or not it is worth enjoying this world at the expense of the next one, a person needs to visualize the next world as a real entity. How would you feel if your parents or some relative decided to give the other family members a large portion of their money and to give you a much smaller portion? Would you accept it happily or not? And in the same vein, if before doing some misdeed you imagined that later you would get an electric shock (Gehinnom is more shocking), wouldn’t you think twice before doing it?
Would you really be happy with a smaller portion in the World to Come?
A third point to consider is that when a person gets deeply involved in pursuing fun, it is difficult later on to stop and start doing things right. The deeper one gets into a certain mode, the harder it is to get out of it. Look at any addict and you will see that he started with some small thing, and just kept on going and going until he sank to a level he never dreamed of. Overindulgence in physicality is similarly addictive.
The fourth and main point is that all we discussed until now was viewed from only one perspective. We have been looking from the “taking” perspective; that we are here to receive good from God. However, if we want to be honest, we need to look at our existence from a “giving” perspective as well. That is, we “owe” God our devotion. He created us, without which we would not exist at all. Isn’t it logical that one is obligated to someone who saved his life? Isn’t it logical that one is obligated to his or her parents just for bringing him or her into the world?
Certainly we owe loyalty to God for creating us, for keeping us alive, and for all that He constantly gives us. We would owe Him allegiance even if we got nothing for it. All the more so if He wants us to be good in order that He can reward us for it. We can compare this to a lender who will reward the borrower with a huge sum of money for fulfilling his obligation and paying back the small loan he was given. Is there any rationale not to do so?
Many people in the world are searching unsuccessfully for meaning to life. They ask, “What is the purpose of all this pain and inner turmoil within me?” Many of our Jewish youth are searching for meaning in the cults, the Far East, and the other religions, while the answer is right here in our own backyard. The Jewish neshamah needs to find meaning and a purpose in life. When your neshamah directs you on the path to God, to connect with Him through the means that He gave us, then, and only then, will you feel that life has a purpose. Without a purpose in life, one cannot be happy, no matter how much physical pleasure he is experiencing.
What emerges from our discussion is that fighting our yetzer hara (evil inclination), which is so difficult for us, should really be our greatest source of happiness. Yes, it is hard. Yes, we lose battles often. If, however, we can keep in mind that this is exactly why we are here, that this fight has a payoff unlike any other, that every inner conflict won is shaping our destiny, then we will know that life is purposeful. When you understand “why in the world am I here,” you will be ready and willing to enjoy the challenges of life.