The Father’s Chastisement
Now, when the Shaarei Teshuvah tells us about this mitzvah he adds an important point that we shouldn’t leave out, something included in ‘remember your journey in life’. Because he quotes there the end of the possuk: As it says, ‘You should know with your heart that just as a father chastises his child, Hashem your G-d chastises you’ (Devarim 8:5).
A young man has to look back and be grateful to his father that he criticized him when he was a child. Sometimes he wanted something but his father said ‘Nothing doing!’. Sometimes his father hit him. Now, this little boy, he didn’t appreciate it at that time; he was immature yet for such understanding. But when he grows up and gains some seichel, he looks back and recognizes that his father saved him from becoming a bum.
Hashem’s Chastisement
And so the Torah here is telling us that included in the mitzvah of remembering the entire road is that we have to look back at the things in our lives that seemed to be misfortune; when our Father in Heaven chastised us, and we have to study how it was for a good purpose.
Of course, the good things you can easily see what was the benefit – when He saved you from accidents and illnesses; when He gave you a wife and a home and children and a parnassah and so on, that’s easier to reminisce about. But here the Torah says that every individual in his own life history should acquire also an attitude of looking back and realizing how things that once seemed to him a setback actually turned out to be a blessing; how our lives were changed for the better by misfortune. Sometimes we were even rescued from destruction, physical destruction and many times spiritual destruction, by things which at the time seemed to be a misfortune.
Fainting Into Failure
The truth is, even if a person’s life is overturned entirely because of a misfortune, it could be he is being saved from worse misfortunes. Here’s a young man working in an office, a young man who has no connection with Torah and mitzvos. And so he’s sitting there thinking about which date he should take out tonight. That’s his life, dates and fun. A true story – I know the man well; he told me the story.
And suddenly he faints; he falls on the floor in a faint. And he’s hurried to the hospital and he is diagnosed, most surprisingly, as a sufferer from tuberculosis. He never expected that! His life turns black on him now because he must leave home to go to a sanatorium to recuperate.
For six months he lay on the porch in the cold weather – that was the treatment in those days, to breathe fresh air – and he had nothing to do; no more business, no more dates, no more fancy car. So there he lies on the porch of the hospital for months and months and he thinks. He thinks!
