Tefillah - 038 Rising From Failure

Hashem Supports The Fallen

"סומך נופלים". - Hashem allows those who fall to “lean” on Him for support, after they fall.

Similarly, it is written, “A righteous person falls seven times, and rises.” Not only does a tzaddik rise after he falls so many times, but with each time he falls, Hashem is there for him, giving him strength to get up from each fall.

How does Hashem strengthen a person when he falls? He doesn’t just strengthen a person after he falls. Hashem helps a person that even when he falls, he won’t fall totally.

‘Days of Love’ and ‘Days of Hate’

Rabbeinu Tam (in Sefer HaYashar) writes that every person has “good days” (Days of Love) and “bad days” (Days of Hate); we all have periods of growth, achievement, social success and feeling positive in general, as well as times of failure, unutilized potential, social alienation, and in general, feeling negative about everything[1].

When a person is going through these “bad days”, the avodah is that he shouldn’t allow himself to fall totally. A person has the ability, even as he’s falling, to avoid falling so hard. He can make his “fall” a bit lighter.

How? This is that even when a person is going through a rough time, he can still connect himself to Hashem, and then receive strength to persevere.

Although we see people who don’t rise after they fall and they remain in their fallen state, this is only because they are not turning to Hashem for help.

A sensible person makes sure to have an organized schedule and make the most out of his period of “Good Days”, but he also makes sure to prepare himself for when the “Bad Days” strike. This way, when those “Bad Days” come, he will be able to go through it and prevent himself from having such a hard fall. Without preparing for “Bad Days”, a person enters a dismal period and he has no idea how to deal with it. He gives up, and he despairs totally. He becomes totally broken.

What a person has to do is to prepare for surviving a dismal period, simultaneously as he lives his regular and ordinary days of the year in which everything is going good for him. Every single person has ups and downs, even the greatest Gadol, but the difference between a regular person and a Gadol is that a Gadol has already prepared himself so well before the bad times that even when he as a fall from his level, he doesn’t fall so much. The more a person prepares himself to deal with hard times, the less of a fall he has when he inevitably falls from his level.

The Deeper Perspective On Dismal Periods: Failing In Order To Grow

The deeper way to view our failings is to realize that even when we fall from our level, it’s really not a fall. It’s necessary for our growth to fall sometimes.

The more a person views life like this, he can notice the following. Every time he has a failure, he will be able to see that although he has fallen, it is much less of a fall than his previous fallouts. This is because he has grown in between the last failure and the current failure. Now he’s at a higher point, so he doesn’t fall as much as he used to.

It is written in Tehillim, “Because I sit in darkness, Hashem is my light.” It is precisely a period of darkness in our life which helps us realize that Hashem is our light, that we rely on Hashem to help us. If not for going through the darkness, we would never see Hashem as our light. It is only darkness that makes us recognize light.

Most of the failures we go through in our life – our failures in spirituality – are actually not failures, from an inner viewpoint. They are all constructive. They help us grow and realize how much we need Hashem to help us progress.

All people go through times which take them out of their normal routine in life. How should one look at this? We must still realize that Hashem is holding us up. 

(We are not discussing here someone who drops Torah and mitzvos because he’s going through a dismal period; that is not part of the discussion here. We are rather discussing someone whose general routine in life has been disrupted, and he continues to keep Torah and mitzvos as he should, but he’s just feeling very down and dismal, because he has been taken out of his normal routine).

The biggest failure in history was Adam’s sin. He had one avodah to do – not to eat from the tree – and he blew it. He failed. Avraham Avinu questioned Hashem, and he asked for a sign from Hashem that his descendants would be redeemed. He got punished for this. We see from this that even the greatest people in history had failures. Of course, we have no comprehension of Adam HaRishon or Avraham Avinu, but one thing is for sure – to some degree, they had failures. So we all have failures; it’s part of life. It’s part of the growth process.

The View From Your Neshamah

We must gain the soul’s perspective on things. Our neshamah (soul) can see from one end of the world to another; it has a higher sense of sight than our physical eyes see. Our soul gives us a whole new perspective on things, a whole new way to see things; it can show us how to ascend our limited physical view on life – which is that failures are simply “failures” – and instead realize that instead failures are part of how we grow.

If we gain our soul’s perspective, the entire way we live our life will change. It enables us to leave the materialistic viewpoint and transcend time, and instead go above time, entering eternity.

These are not mere words; they are a description of how to view reality.

The only ‘failure’ there is in Creation is the fact that people do not have the soul’s viewpoint! They remain confined to their past failures, and they live in their failures, and they don’t know how to transcend the time and place they are in.

If a person has only a superficial perspective and he lives in Bnei Brak, let’s say, he thinks “I live in Bnei Brak.” He doesn’t know how to go beyond that perspective; he confines himself to times and places. Most people are like this, and this is the root “failure” that is going on in Creation.

Realize that you are a neshamah, a soul, which existed already before this world came about. You are not confined to the various failures that you go through on this world. The other nations of the world, who do not have a neshamah, do not have this power to transcend places and times. Only a Jew, who has a neshamah, can see beyond this world, and thus realize that he can rise above all his failures, and not live in them.

In Conclusion

May we merit from Hashem to gain the perspective from our neshamah, and more so, that our neshamah should shine in our life. Through that, we will have a whole different perspective towards our failures. We can then come to realize that just as Hashem revives the dead and returns the soul to the body, so can He return the light of our soul to our body, where we can gain the soul’s perspective on things.

This is how we can come to “lean” on Hashem after we fall – by having the soul’s perspective. What you went through in 5773 is not all there is to your existence. You were around since the beginning of the world, and you will continue to exist in the future, when there will be the Next World, the coming of Moshiach, and the revival of the dead. With this perspective, you leave your confines to the present time, and you realize that your failures of the past don’t have to affect you.