Getting to Know Your Simcha - 016 Being Aware & Being Connected

Happiness In Doing the Mitzvos

Another part of our happiness includes the concept of simchah b’mitzvos ­- being happy when we do a mitzvah.

Chazal say (Berachos 30a) that there is no Shechinah unless there is simchah of a mitzvah. There is a happiness which is contained inside every mitzvah – that is, for one who is connected to the mitzvah.

A mitzvah brings happiness because every mitzvah is an action which brings out a certain potential. When our potential is utilized, this brings us happiness. This is the happiness caused by a mitzvah – our potential is utilized.

What exactly is this happiness?

Tzavta - Connection

If a person is lonely, he can’t be happy; loneliness contradicts happiness. The opposite of loneliness is when one feels connected to something. Thus, being connected to something is what brings happiness.

Mitzvah comes from the word tzavta (togetherness). The essence of a mitzvah is to experience a certain connection that comes from it. Only with connection can a person be happy; when a person is alone, he can’t be happy – this we can see from a chosson and kallah, whom we bless “Just as your Creator rejoiced in You in Gan Eden of old.” Hashem rejoiced only when He created someone else, Adam, in creation.

Happiness necessitates connection. What exactly this connection is a discussion for itself, which we will explain soon.

It is the tzavta, connection, in the mitzvah which brings happiness to a person when he does it. Most people do not experience this happiness when they do mitzvos, because they aren’t aware of how mitzvos can cause a connection. It is thus only great people who are able to be happy just from doing a mitzvah, because only they are aware of what is going on behind the act of the mitzvah.

Everything in Creation – both inanimate and animate things – can either cause a connection or a separation between one and Creation. Since most people aren’t aware of what an action is able to cause, they don’t appreciate the mitzvos, and don’t feel a happiness from doing them – because they aren’t using the mitzvos to connect to anything. They don’t realize that mitzvos are all about tzavta – connection.

To illustrate, we can find many people who do a lot of chessed (kindness) yet they aren’t happy. Why don’t the mitzvos they are doing make them happy? It is because they aren’t aware of what they are doing. When you’re not aware of what you’re doing, that equates into that you’re not connected to what you’re doing. When you’re not connected to your good deeds, you can’t feel the tzavta in a mitzvah - and thus there will be no resulting happiness.

Increasing Our Awareness

When a person does a mitzvah, he has to be aware – not just in his mind, but to have a soul-awareness – that this action can cause a certain connection.

It’s possible that a person learns Torah all day, but he isn’t connected to his learning; this is why we can find people who learn a lot of Torah all day, yet they are still not happy; it is because they aren’t aware of what their learning does for them, and thus they aren’t connected to their learning. When a person doesn’t feel connected to his learning, he won’t get happiness from his learning.

If only people would be aware of what they are doing as they do a mitzvah! With awareness, people would be connected to what they do, and they would be happy.

Balancing Intellect With Heart

Although our heart has to be involved in what we’re doing in order for us to feel connected to what we do, we must state that we should not either go to the other extreme and only seek to live based on a heart-based life. We need a balance of both our intellect and our heart; to only lived based upon our heart is lowering ourselves from the level of Torah to the level of mitzvos without Torah.

A person has to integrate his heart with his mind – one without the other is an extreme kind of life, and extremes are not the way to live.

Every good action we do is able to connect us to something, but we have to be aware of this in order to be happy.

For example, Chazal say that dibbur\speech is a form of zivug\connection. Really, speech is supposed to be used as a way for us to connect to other people. When we talk to people, do we realize that we are connecting to them when we have conversations? Usually, we are not of the purpose behind our conversations, and we forget that our conversations with people are supposed to connect us to others.

It has to be “you”

A person can’t become connected to what he does if he’s doing something that’s doesn’t personify him. It has to be something that is a form of your self-expression in order for you to connect to it.

For example, many people work at jobs that really aren’t suitable for them. A person in this situation can’t connect to what he does, and he can’t be happy with his job.

When it comes to learning Torah as well, many people learn because they “have to” learn (either because they are getting paid for it, or because of social status…), and not because they are connected to their learning.

In the sefarim hakedoshim, there are many great levels described there in which a person is able to come to. Any great person who reached any of these levels – whether it is Yiras Shomayim (fear of Heaven) or kedushah (holiness) – reached it because they were connected to what they learned; they were there.

Making Yourself More Aware

Ask yourself: Is what you’re doing what’s cut out for you?

If a person does something and it makes him sad afterwards, it is because he isn’t connected to what he does and therefore he is too caught up in the physical aspect of the action. This causes sadness, because really all actions (without awareness) cause sadness; man was cursed with labor, which was in essence a curse of sadness upon the world.

We can give another example. When you walk to shul in the morning to daven, think for a few seconds: Why am I walking to shul right now? Become aware as you are walking that you are walking because you are going to daven.

Start becoming more aware of every action you do – why you are doing, and when you are doing it. This awareness will enable you to become connected to what you do, and when you become connected to the mitzvos, you will be able to receive happiness from doing the mitzvah.