When life feels stale, it’s in our hands to make it new again

Running. Doing. Knocking down obligations. Yearning for a well deserved break... and then getting up and doing it all over again.

Does that sound at all like your life?

As we mentioned last week, thanks to the yetzer hara, too many of us have fallen into the “rut of rote.” We’re drifting through life on autopilot, doing everything we need to do – which is wonderful! – but doing it mechanically.

And it feels mechanical, too. Stale. Flat. We aren’t feeling inspired or excited by our lives, by our Torah activities. So our minds constantly seek pleasure and convenience, hoping that if our obligations can’t fill us, at least we’ll find happiness and excitement somewhere.

Yes, the yetzer hara has us good. He’s managed to blind us to the fact that if we only fought the rote, the drift, and started actively seeking newness in our Torah lives, we’d find life so much more pleasurable and satisfying than a life filled to the brim with temporal pleasures (even caramel vanilla K-cups).

Ever wondered why the Hebrew word for life – “chayim” – is plural?

Because life – and every aspect within it – is dynamic. It’s constantly renewing itself. Evolving. Developing.

We are dynamic, full of endless inner depth and capacity for change. So are our marriages. Our spouses. The other people in our lives. And, of course, the Torah we study. The mitzvos we do. The relationship we’re blessed to have with Hashem.

The way He designed life, Hashem means us to live in a constant state of discovery. Learning new things about ourselves. Discovering new facets of those around us. Finding new meanings in even the simplest parts of Torah.

If we’re consciously in discovery mode – looking and listening for new discoveries – we can routinely reveal depths, insights, and points of connection we never saw before. In our davening. In our understanding of Shabbos. In our spouses and children.

Shemos 18:11: When Yisro heard about the miracles of the Exodus – the defeat of Egypt, the splitting of the sea, the way Hashem took care of us in the Desert – he made a proclamation: “Now I know that Hashem is greater than other gods.”

Hadn’t he come to that conclusion long before? Yes, he had, Rashi assures us. In Rashi’s exact words, Yisro was really saying: “I recognized Him before, but now even more so.”

Our emunah, our recognition of Hashem, isn’t just a flat piece of awareness we carry. It’s a constant process – every day, we see more of His hand in our lives, feel His presence more strongly.

Or… we would – if we were only in discovery mode.

If we only recognized that life is so much fuller when we stop running after a comfortable seat in the stands and jump onto the court. When we start actively pursuing discovery.

Of course, this switch won’t happen overnight. Making the full transition from the stands to the court of life, of Judaism, can take years upon years of work.

But we can start the process. Right now.

All we have to do is choose one aspect of our lives – bentching? The weekly parsha? The neighbor we don’t have much to do with? The morning ritual of getting the kids out of pajamas? – and go into it with eyes committed to finding or experiencing something new.

Because if our eyes are open, we will find something. Some new insight, some new aspect of the people we’re focusing on. And we’ll experience an aha moment. A moment where we’re alive, where we feel like what we’re doing and experiencing is meaningful.

Let’s choose our one little area of discovery. Let’s savor the feeling that follows the discoveries we make.

And let’s remind ourselves that once we learn to get out of the yetzer hara’s drift, we can fill our entire lives with that sense of meaning, vibrancy, and fulfillment.