The power to decide.
That is real freedom.
I think that most people have behaviors that they are not happy with. These can range from speaking lashon hara, to anger management, to truly addictive behaviors. These behaviors can take many forms and come in various shades. At times we manage to control them, and at times we do not. Some behaviors are so automatic that we lack awareness about them.
Why do we do things that we do not want to do? How does that even make sense?
Even more puzzling, why are there some behaviors that may be difficult to control in some circumstances but which are not a struggle at all in others? An intriguing example for me has to do with the laws of meat and milk. I love ice cream, and if it is put in front of me, I will either eat it or at the very least have an internal struggle about it, if I think that I “shouldn’t” have it. That very same (dairy) ice cream, if put in front of me after I have just had a meat meal, will not even trigger a minor struggle in my mind.
How can this be? Is it not the same brain in both circumstances?
And how is this related to Pesach?
At the risk of sounding extreme, I think that learning to control our behaviors is THE purpose of our lives. And I think that the laws of the Torah are a gift in that they give us some insight into how to accomplish this.
Let’s think for a second about the internal struggles that occur when we behave in ways that we are not proud of. On the one hand, we know in our higher mind that we do not want this particular behavior. However, in the moment, on some level, we do want it. Why the dichotomy? Why can’t we just listen to our higher mind?
Interestingly, when something is ABSOLUTELY off limits, most of us will not struggle. This may differ from person to person, but I am sure you can think of examples of things which perhaps other people struggle with but you do not, because it so clearly out of bounds that you don’t even consider it.
The problems start in the gray area. For example, if smoking is something that is acceptable in society, and/or is not against halacha per se, then someone who has a smoking habit will have a hard time breaking it. But I would venture to say that if that same person had a sick child who was at high risk of dying from the second hand smoke of that parent, that parent would in most circumstances be able to control themselves, at least in the presence of the child. This is proof that we do have control. The difficulty is in drawing the line.
When Bnei Yisrael crossed the Yam Suf, there was a clear line drawn between us and the Egyptians. Between our belief system and theirs. It’s not that there weren’t some challenges to this – for many years there was a strong temptation to go back to the “old ways.” But really, that line was never fully crossed again and over time it got easier to maintain the separation.
It would seem like freedom is the ability to do whatever we want. But what do we really want? It seems like sometimes we ourselves are in conflict. We want the chocolate cake but we also want to be thin. We want to be calm and stress free but something triggers us and we find ourselves “wanting” to lash out. So it is way too simplistic to define freedom as the ability to do what we want, because what we want is often not clearly defined in our own minds.
I would like to posit that TRUE FREEDOM is the ability to separate our higher “wants” from our baser desires. Freedom is the ability to do what we really want – what our higher self wants, without being enslaved by our baser, more animalistic side.
True freedom comes from consistently knowing where to draw our lines. Sometimes we are given that information (as in the laws of the Torah), and sometimes we have to figure it out for ourselves.
This is the beauty of being human. Animals were only given one of these types of desires, and they have no choice, really, but to act upon them. We, however, were given the ability to live on a higher plane and not be enslaved by them.
May we be redeemed this Pesach from at least one lower level, unwanted behavior. By knowing where to draw our lines in the sand, by taking a firm stance with regard to what we really want and who we want to be, we can cross our personal Yam Suf, and thus experience true freedom and joy.
Chag Kasher V’sameach