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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Treat everyday mishaps and life's challenges as purposeful, since Hashem places us in situations (including ones we don't understand) to fulfill our mission, and struggles (nisyonos) are the reason we are here rather than something to be removed. Rabbi Schachter illustrates this with personal anecdotes about the car wash and golf cart episodes, stressing that outcomes are guided from Above even when we don't know why we are somewhere.
Key Points
- Hashem directs where we are and what we see, even when we are on a trip or errand whose purpose we don't understand, so the reason may be unseen.
- Success or failure in a task (getting the appointment, winning the client) may not be the measure of whether we did what we were supposed to do in Shomayim's accounting.
- The Mabit (מבי"ט) teaches that we don't daven because we have problems; rather, we have problems because we need to daven.
- A man asked Reb Yankele of Pshevorsk to remove his nisyonos; the Rebbe asked if he'd rather be a bench or a chair, since only living, challenged beings like people have nisyonos.
- The anecdotes about the car wash and golf carts show how a light family outing can carry an unexpected lesson about restraint and mindset.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: The only actionable guidance given is to close your eyes when you encounter something you are not supposed to see or take part in, rather than engaging with it; and to accept your nisyonos as part of your purpose instead of asking to have them removed. No other steps, amounts, or procedures are described.
- The car wash story: the speaker took the kids to a car wash before Shabbos to clean the car for the Mikveh, and in a pouring rain the wash staff tried to close, but he insisted on going through, and the worker gave him extra wax, for which he had to pay more.
- The golf cart story: a friend took his family to a golf course to drive carts (cheaper than bumper cars), and the kids drove off until the staff came running, reminding him he had forgotten the golf clubs.
- The Reb Yankele exchange: the rebbe asked the man whether he wanted to be a bench or a chair, illustrating that only living beings have nisyonos.
- The speaker frames the lesson as a matter of perspective: outcomes shaped from Above may differ from the outcomes we expect.
Bottom Line
Life's difficulties and detours are not accidents to be escaped; they are part of why we are here, so the work is to respond with faith rather than to ask for them to be taken away.
