The True Source of Hubris
I heard the following yesod from my mother, tlit”a: How can it be that a person has hubris, to be a ba’al ga’avah? It’s the silliest thing! We see so clearly every day how Hashem does whatever He wants with us! If it is ordained that a person should, R”l, be run over by a car, he will lose his life in an instant. If Hashem takes away a person’s sechel for a moment, he can do the most outrageous things—causing him to lose everything he has, and so forth.
HaKadosh Baruch Hu holds a person in his Hands and does whatever He wants with him—and anyone who pays attention even a little bit will see how, no matter what he does, it is Hashem running the show, and it is He Who has the last word in all his affairs.
In this vein, I heard the following incident from a Yid who was on a layover in a foreign country. As he approached the gate for his connecting flight, he was told by a goy who was standing there that the flight had been delayed by an hour... he can sit down and wait. An hour later, he once again approached the gate, only to see that the flight had left on time, one hour ago! “Why would you think that the flight was postponed?” the airline employees asked. “A man was standing here and told me so...” he said. Thus, he found himself in a strange land, all alone. He was forced to purchase a new ticket in order to reach his destination.
And then it dawned on him: “It is an incredible thing that happened here! Who placed the goy in my path to tell me that the flight was delayed? HaKadosh Baruch Hu did! It was He Who didn’t want me to travel on this flight....”
Thus, we see that the Eibishter does whatever He wants with us. He decided that this person should remain there alone, and so He sent someone—whether it was Eliyahu HaNavi masquerading as a goy or otherwise— to prevent him from getting on the flight. And so, we ask the question: In light of this, how on earth can a person be hubristic? Where does this ability emanate from?
Rooted in Truth
The answer is that the source of ga’avah actually comes from a very exalted source. A person feels big, because he truly has a neshamah that is extremely great! The problem is that that the guf distorts this feeling of greatness and makes a person feel as if he can do things on his own. That is, ga’avah is a kelipah of something that—at its root—is true. If it weren’t true at its source, it could never be sustained; there would never be such a thing as ga’avah.
This yesod applies to the topic of teshuvah as well. Often, when a person has a deep emotional feeling toward something, the emotion may be rooted in truth, but he made a mistake along the way, and that mistake ruins his life.
When a person despairs of ever being able to change, he has a dream—halevai I could learn a few hours every day, and not just any learning, but learning amid bittul to Hashem, learning Torah lishmah... halevai my davening could be the way it should be, halevai I could learn kabbalah. But he is in despair. This despair is rooted in the truth—because the truth is that he can’t reach these lofty levels on his own, and thus, he is daunted.
But he is making a mistake. He forgot that the Ribbono shel Olam helps us come close to Him. If you will do your part, HaKadosh Baruch Hu will help you. And we must know this, and feel it, with the greatest certainty that exists.
