Rabbi Mendy Herson's Blog

How do you picture the humble person?

Ambitious and driven to success? Or lacking presence and self-confidence, an easily manipulated wallflower shyly averting his/her gaze?  
Let’s take a Torah look at the real-life application of humility.
G-d wants us to live energetically, to pro-actively tackle the world and bring it to a meaningful place. G-d also wants us to be humble. So, the two attitudes need to co-exist, and humility can’t mean shy passivity and submissiveness. 
Humility means being honest with yourself, and seeing yourself for who you really are.
Humility isn’t a self-effacing attitude, which denies – to yourself or others – your value, strengths and talents. That’s called self-doubt. And it usually involves self-deception. 
Humility is different. The humble person is fully aware of his/her talents; one is fully conscious of one’s blessings – genetic, familial/societal or financial. 
Humility is about the attitude with which you approach your gifts and talents, not denying them.
We all need to look at ourselves and take honest stock of our G-d-given ‘toolbox,’ the gifts with which we’ve been endowed. Then we need to recognize that each of those life-advantages comes with a responsibility.

G-d grants us gifts for a purpose. Each of your strengths is a call to action, beckoning you “develop me, utilize me, make into a conduit for meaningful living.” So you and I need to look at each one of our gifts and ask: Am I doing you justice? 
I need to honestly consider the possibility that others would have accomplished more with my tools. 
I also need to consider that people without my specific talents, my tools, have simply been dealt a different tool box. That’s G-d’s business, not mine.
To a humble person, the real measure of life isn’t which tools we’ve each been dealt; it’s what we’re doing with them.
So humility is a sense of responsibility: I need to be who G-d created me to be. I’m humbler when I’m not competing against others, but against my own potential. I’m humbler when I look for new opportunities to be the best I can be. 
Humility. Now there’s an ambition.

When we think of the word 'pleasure,' we might think of an elegant banquet or an exotic vacation. Something in the self-gratification mode.

So it feels counter-intuitive that Chabad Chassidic thought identifies ‘pleasure’ – ‘Taanug’ in Hebrew – as the core of our soul energies. Does it make sense that when we dig deep into our psyches, peeling away our personality layers and getting to our Essence, we find pleasure?? Our moral teachings generally steer us away from selfishness and self-absorption, guiding us toward a life of other-centeredness. So how can pleasure, our own enjoyment, be at the core of our holy soul?

It’s important to realize that pleasure isn’t inherently a selfish thing. It’s a morally neutral soul-rhythm, a character-muscle. We can certainly point it in the direction of self-satisfaction. But it has other, loftier applications. There's actually a special brand of pleasure that comes with selflessness.

I can enjoy an ice cream cone. But if I use the treat to ignite a smile to the face of a poor child, that beaming face would give me a soul rush beyond anything sugar can accomplish.

The easy path to pleasure is to just eat the ice cream myself. Reaching out to that child takes some effort.

Meaningful pleasure doesn't come easy. But it’s pleasure at its highest form. And that pleasure should be life’s driving force.

So we should ask ourselves: What gives us pleasure? Do we find beauty in leaving our self-bubble and connecting with others? Do we appreciate the inner contentment that comes with making a difference in someone else's life?

Pleasure strikes deep within our core, so where we find pleasure, where our passions lie, is hugely important. If we can harness our pleasure taste buds to appreciate relationship building, if we can find excitement in selfless commitment to a special relationship, we will have engaged a powerful personal engine to power a life of meaning.

My daughter Faigie is getting married this coming Tuesday, G-d willing. My wife Malkie and I pray that she and [her fiancé] Mendy, experience a life of true pleasure, the pleasure that comes with selfless commitment to each other, and to a meaningful life. May they have a life in which they strive to access higher pleasure, a life in which that beauty permeates every waking moment.

Mazel Tov Faigie and Mendy.