A Different Perspective On Misery & Joy

Yiddishkeit is filled with joy. Or more correctly, it offers us opportunities to connect with the joyous side of life. Life of course can be a misery. As someone once joked, “life is full of disappointments and suffering and setbacks and it’s over much too soon”. But the same miserable life is also filled with joy.

But how can this be so? How can the same life be both miserable and joyous?

Well if you consider the perspective of the late M. Scott Peck, the pain in life is supposed to be some educational. Throughout his classic, The Road Less Traveled, he quotes Abraham Lincoln who said that “those things that hurt, instruct”. And since Peck believed that we’re here on Earth to learn, our suffering simply means that we are being offered lessons for our own betterment.

For many years, I very much connected with Peck’s idea. Some Jewish thinkers and authentic Jewish sources put forward ideas that are quite similar. In fact, I still find a good deal of my own misery to help me become a better person.

In recent years however I have begun to look at joy and misery in a different light. Essentially, I learned that misery is only misery when I resist it. And as I learned to put aside my judgments and my automatic evaluations about circumstances, I found that I was less swept into the vortex that I had known so well from my misery days.

But more on that later.

Welcome To A Course In Joy

Shalom and welcome to A Course In Joy. It is a privilege to offer the lessons of joy with you.

Josh Mark

Joshmark@zahav.net.il