For my Friend and my Rebbi,in thanks.

I am reminded of a famous expression which is found throughout the world. In fact I can hear it ringing through my ears in the soft German of my family. I wont mention it explicitly because it is often formulated in a heretical manner. The gist of the expression is that Man plans his life and then circumstances intervene and in the end the man has ended up in a place and state that he had not planned nor had he desired at the beginning. Often times the man experiences great grief at the loss of his "plan" and the experience of his new reality.When the man is thrust into a new reality he is often so fixated on his "plan" , his conception of "happiness" and "good" that he cannot escape his own delusions. He continues to dwell as if he was in the same state as the ante-circumstance man was. In short he had become so infatuated with his prior life, so comfortable, so enamored with the object of his desires and the subject of his thoughts that he can not redeem himself. When he reaches this point, bobbing up and down in the tide he does not even know to tread water. The fortunate ones are those who have that cliched life vest tossed to them.

It is in this light , with this image in my mind that I am writing.

Recently, I experienced first hand the emotional glass breaking that comes with a destruction , an annihilation of "the plan". I would not be eating, I would not be functioning were it not for a salvation that was done for me . They spent their time and their energies , emotionally and otherwise when they were not at a loss for important things to do seperate from me.They demonstrated that my "plan" and my Life were not equivalent. They pointed me on the way to the "Happy Life", they saved me and I love them .



I owe them more than I can repay, and as such my only tribute - some thoughts on the nature of happiness which I have collected from my friends, my Rebbi and Seneca, which are in agreement with one another .



"To live happily, my brother Gallio,is the desire of all men, but their minds are blinded to a clear vision of just what it is that makes life happy; and so far from its being easy to attain the happy life, the more eagerly a man strives to reach it, the farther he recedes from it if he has made a mistake in the road for when it leads in the opposite direction, his very speed will increase the distance that separates him"

When man is in the midst of his "plan", his desires, his lusts, he cannot conceive of the possibility that what he imagines to be his life, what he wants , what he strives for, is not what is good, is not what will make him Happy.Even as the plan crumbles around him, he deludes himself to think that the plan is sound. He is so steeped in the fantasy that he drives himself ever further down the opposite path.The faculty of mind is left at the dock, and he refuses to see that the plan has failed.


"Let us, therefore, decide both upon the goal and upon the way, and not fail to find some experienced guide who has explored the region towards which we are advancing; for the conditions of this journey are different from those of most travel"

This is the solution to the man slipping beneath the waves of his own self denial and fantasy. The Rabbis have said it thus, " Yelech etzel Chacham" , "Go to a sage and he will instruct you".Most people under normal circumstances are untrained and unable to sort through their own turmoil and end in Happiness. The chacham is the therapist, the role model and the guide. Seneca endorses " Aseh Lecha Rav". He cautions , as does the Mesorah, not to blindly follow anyone. The mind is the crucible.Sometimes however, the mind is absent.


"You understand, even if I do not say more, that, when once we have driven away all that excites or affrights us, there ensues unbroken tranquillity and enduring freedom; for when pleasures and fears have been banished, then, in place of all that is trivial and fragile and harmful just because of the evil it works, there comes upon us first a boundless joy that is firm and unalterable, then peace and harmony of the soul and true greatness coupled with kindliness; for all ferocity is born from weakness"
This paragraph resonates with me. I can recall time after time after time being instructed in the truth of this statement. At a certain point man holds tight to his pain , his fragility because that very thing is a remnant of the lost desires, the lost "life" that you had planned.
" But no man can be happy unless he is sane, and no man can be sane who searches for what will injure him in place of what is best."
This is the sickness of the man who cannot allow himself happiness. He thinks bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter. He attempts to eat things which are not food. He seeks out and cleaves to the things that are his undoing.
"the happy man is he who allows reason to fix the value of every condition of existence"
This is the definition. This points to what the mesorah has declared regarding Man and his happiness. Happiness , Good for man, demands his mind. "And therefore the ancients have enjoined us to follow, not the most pleasant, but the best life, in order that pleasure should be, not the, leader, but the companion of a right and proper desire. For we must use Nature as our guide; she it is that Reason heeds, it is of her that it takes counsel. Therefore to live happily is the same thing as to liveaccording to Nature." To live happily, is to live the life of mind, for the nature of man is a rational animal.