Getting to Know Your Simcha - 018 Unifying Your Will

Tiferes -- Beauty

The Midrash[1] lists ten different expressions of simchah (happiness): simchah, sasson, tiferes, gilah, rinah, ditzah, chedvah, tzahalah, alitzah and alizah.

The third kind of simchah is called “tiferes”, which means “beauty.” What is the happiness of tiferes? What exactly is beauty and how is it happiness?

The Gemara states that Hashem is unlike human beings; when a human being is defeated, he is sad, but when Hashem is defeated (through prayers), He is happy.

In the Gemara above we see that it’s not that although He was defeated, He still remains happy; it is that because He is defeated, that is why He is happy. But it is still hard to understand why this causes happiness. What is this happiness?

Happiness From Netzach

Each person has various desires. When a person fulfills his desires, he is happy; that is a fact. This is really because a person feels victorious upon fulfilling his desires. He feels a netzach (eternal victory).

That is why tiferes is also a kind of happiness. Tiferes is a blend of all different colors that come together to form a beautiful sight. Every color is different than another color, and they are really opposites; blue and red are totally opposing colors. The beauty of tiferes is that all the opposite colors come together and form something beautiful. When opposites are connected together, this forms a netzach – a certain victory.

Happiness From Ratzon

One kind of happiness is when a person fulfills what he wants. This is a happiness that comes from the faculty of ratzon in a person. Anyone is happy when he wants something and then he gets it.

But there is another kind of happiness, which also comes from ratzon. This is when a person only wants one thing alone – the desire to do Hashem’s will. Retzoinenu laasos retzoncha -“It is our will to do Your will.”

This kind of happiness is deeper, because it comes from our very ratzon itself; it does not depend on the ratzon being fulfilled. In the first kind of happiness, we can only be happy when the ratzon we have gets fulfilled, but with this kind of happiness, our very ratzon gives us happiness.

When a person wants many things, sometimes he gets what he wants – but sometimes he doesn’t. He attains netzach sometimes through his ratzon, but sometimes he doesn’t attain netzach and instead becomes menutzach (defeated). But if a person has only one desire, it doesn’t make him have any more desires than the one desire he already has, and the chances for disappointment are much less.

There is a third kind of happiness which comes from our ratzon – when the ratzon is nullified totally, and we have no desire whatsoever. This will only be revealed in the future. For now, we can have a happiness that comes from our very ratzon – when we take all our desires and unify them into one single desire: the desire to only do Hashem’s will, retzoneinu laasos retzoncha.

Happiness From Your Existence  (Havayah)

There are many forces in our soul. Your existence and your will are two separate forces in you; you are not what you want. You are your intrinsic existence, and on top of that you want things. You are able to have happiness come from your will, which is through wanting only one desire – to do the will of Hashem. But even deeper than this happiness a happiness which you can draw forth from your very existence.

What you want is a garment on top of your essence, along with the other various forces in the soul. But your ratzon is not who you actually are. Your essence – your existence – is who you actually are. In your own existence, you can find a very great kind of happiness; this is the happiness experienced by tzaddikim, as it is written, “The righteous rejoice in Hashem.”

We can draw forth happiness both from our will (as we explained) as well as from our own existence. If we want a few things other than our will to do Hashem’s will, our various desires will just cause us to become sad.