For a moment Yerachmiel lifted his gaze which was still cast to the ground, as if to signal me to go on.
"A complete victory" I continued, "is the sum of many small victories, and sometimes losses too. Let me bring you a parable from the battle field:
Many years ago there were two kingdoms that lived side by side. One was a very poor kingdom with a large population of people who struggled to get through each day. The second kingdom had much fewer subjects but was very rich, and the people there lived a high life style and knew no want. For many years the two kingdoms lived together in harmony, in spite of their vast differences.
One day, the king of the rich country died and his son rose to the throne. He was very unlike his wise and thoughtful father, and instead was aggressive, hasty and unrestrained.
One bright day he decided without any reason, that he would like to conquer the neighboring kingdom. He wished to show off his great strength, without thinking for a moment about the destructive consequences that his actions were likely to cause. His advisors tried to talk him out of it, but to no avail. In a well planned surprise strike, the young king managed to invade the territory of the neighboring kingdom with his large army.
At first, the people of the poor kingdom tried to show resistance. They fought valiantly with great sacrifice to protect their homeland. But when they saw that the enemy had already succeeded in conquering significant areas of their territory on the very first day, their spirit was broken and in a short period of time they surrendered.
The people of the poor kingdom thought that perhaps the new king would share his riches with them, but they were quickly disappointed. Over time, he pillaged even the little that they had, until the entire population were left starving and broken in body and spirit.
When the populace understood that they were destined to die of starvation and had nothing more to lose, they decided - especially those who lived on the border with the rich kingdom - to try a stealth incursion into the enemy kingdom to search for food. Under cover of night, they cut through the fences and tried to slip inside. But those who were fortunate enough to be saved from the guard dog's vicious teeth were quickly shot at by the many soldiers who manned the border. The few that managed to survive were caught by citizens and given over to the authorities who threw them in prison. And so, the people of the poor kingdom knew that their fate was sealed. They sunk into despair and self pity, and awaited their deaths.
Suddenly one of the older advisors of the king got up and said: "My dear people, instead of sitting and just waiting for our deaths, let's do something. We already saw that individuals who try to steal across the border doesn't work. Our only chance of success is if we unite and work together with wisdom and judgment. It's no secret that we outnumber the enemy by far. Let us use this to our advantage. We can choose an area on the border that is the least guarded and invade there with our thousands of men, women and children - men first, and the women and children behind us. It needs to be an area that is the right size for us to be able to insure that we can keep complete control over it for the long term. And then, with the help of the riches that we'll find there, we'll be able to firmly establish our hold on that territory and get stronger. Then when we feel secure enough, we'll go out and conquer another area for ourselves, and establish our hold there too. And so on and so forth, until the entire neighboring kingdom will fall into our hands like a ripe fruit.
"So the citizens followed his wise advice, and what do you think happened in the end, do you think they succeeded?" I asked Yerachmiel.
"I'm sure they did" answered Yerachmiel. "They acted with wisdom. They didn't try and conquer the entire country at once, because that would have failed miserably. But I really don't see how this is related to..."
"Good" I replied. "That is exactly what I was aiming for. The two neighboring kingdoms are our Yetzer Hara and our Yetzer Tov..."
The lesson of today's e-mail will be discussed in the coming e-mail Iy"h...