Q & A: Getting Older

“I ache in the places where I used to play...” - Leonard Cohen

Q: “Hi Rabbi, listen, my parents are coming to visit. I notice the years. None of us are getting any younger... you know what I'm saying? They're pretty stoic about it. But when I look at it – the way the body get's older, I'm not sure how to think about it. I'm a soul in a body. I'm not a detached soul – when the body feels pain or gets weaker, what am I meant to think?! I don't have a way to think about it. Just transcend the body? We're a soul in a body. Sometimes it seems cruel. A kind of captivity...”

A: “I hear you. I hear you! What this is representing is that the human sojourn in the word has a definite purpose. It is not merely the experience of being in the world and facing challenges and claiming accomplishments.  

There is a human purpose much superior to anything we can actually perceive.

What we accomplish for example by mainting a clear and pure view of life and activity, despite the challenges is essentially not just a personal purification or whatever, but accomplishing an a universal level.

Overcoming a nisayon (test) is a statement that says, 'look, there is a bigger truth beyond my limited existence and that's true even in the face of personal sacrifice'.

The stages of man – youth, middle years and the elderly years; each has a particular challenge and universal affect.

Youth proves the principle – each generation starts from scratch and in different situations, comes to recognize the G-dly truth via different pathways.

Middle years – these are the 'standard bearers'. They solidify and give expression to the discoveries of youth.

The elder years – they have a unique beauty. In these years, whatever you do is not for personal gain or for proof – rather things are done on the level of pure truth. This is why it says, “listen to your elders” - they have a special way of looking at things.”

Q: “Thanks Rabbi, I took notes and I will be reviewing them. But I still can't help feeling that there's a cruel joke going on. A man agrees, 'true, we should accept good and bad news with equanimity' and a moment later, when told his investments have been lost at sea, he falls into a faint. Or a great man with some fairly trivial injury, can hardly think clearly and function...!”

A: “This indicates the limitless depth of the G-dly truth we are essentially going towards recognizing. There is a dimension with no end.

We are in captivity or incapacitated, only in regards to the level we have reached at that time, but not with regards to the level that we can get to...

And hence the test.

Avraham Avinu had 10 tests. Each more severe than the preceding. But he was not there till he was told to put Yitzchak on the alter!

The progress made by means of a test is beyond compare, but we don't ask for a test. He gives it to us when he wants to wake us up – this is not a gradual process.  

So how do you make dramatic progress without the tests? 

By making the normal path 'mesirus nefesh'! This is like our Rebbe'im. Our Rebbe would sit the whole night. Many sleepless nights a week. Seeing people. Simple people. Individuals. People waking from a nightmare. 

In his room you felt light, and that the world is still real...!”

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