Life Revolves Around Our Burdens and Preoccupations
When we take stock of our lives, we will realize that ninety percent of our time revolves around bigger and smaller טירדות, the daily dilemmas and problems and preoccupations that inevitably arise. The nature of these varies, but they’re always here. Sometimes it’s for good things, and sometimes it’s due to better things. Here a person needs money to make a wedding or to fulfill the mitzvos of a Yom Tov, or he may need money for a tutor for his struggling child, etc. But, l’maiseh, we spend our lives preoccupied with dilemmas large and small.
Sometimes, a person may ask himself, “If I spend so much of my life dealing with all these things, when do I get to the main event?! When do I get to live life itself? Is it the two hours that I spend learning every day? The small bit of time when I experience deveikus in the Ribbono shel Olam? Everything—what I spend the majority of my time on—is all to enable the small portion of my day that really counts?!
Kirvas Elokim Amid the Hecticness
But the truth is that the reason we have so many טירדות is because we have come to the world to find deveikus with Hashem through these dilemmas. A Yid must be able to experience the greatest deveikus even when he finds himself between a rock and a hard place.... When he finds himself in situations in which he doesn’t know what will happen next—and in this situation he davens, he thanks, he knows that the Ribbono shel Olam is together with him both when he’s joyful as well as when he’s sad.
This is the way this Yid endures all the “stations” in his life—all the while attaining new levels of closeness to Hashem. Throughout every situation he encounters, he builds up new feelings of closeness with Hashem.
