Are our feelings of morality really affected by how we act? I’ll prove it. Why are most people devastated if they accidentally eat nonkosher food, but they barely shrug their shoulders if they inadvertently speak lashon hara? Lashon hara is just as serious, if not more so. Sometimes people look at inappropriate images, but wouldn’t turn on a light on Shabbos to do so. How can we understand such behavior? Both are forbidden. But the way a person acts becomes “what I do,” and it just doesn’t feel as bad as “what I don’t do,” even if it is actually worse (Kiddushin 40a; Tosafos Sotah 7a s.v. Amar). We must fix this powerful force, so we can tell the yetzer hara, “I don’t do that!” and defeat him.
The solution is tricky because it requires a change in perspective. We do our best when we are excited by what we can accomplish and how great we can become. But thinking about greatness can get us to think about where we are holding now. Until we learn how to properly identify ourselves, we must try not to think about our current identity. Do not think about where you are holding. It’s not relevant right now.
Life’s battles are supposed to be tough. Though we hope to ace every challenge, we cannot guarantee perfection. We can’t let one mishap define and crush us. We must focus on how much we accomplish and how much greater we reach every time we exert effort to control ourselves, rather than worrying about not being perfect. Focusing on our status in this twisted way is inaccurate, painful, and dangerous. (See Chapters 2, 10, and 18.) We won’t be able to properly gauge our status until after we learn the correct perspective and achieve significant success as well.
But not viewing ourselves negatively is not enough. We must rebuild our identity by beginning to think of ourselves positively. Even if we have messed up many times, that doesn’t make us bad people. We stumbled; we are not sinners. And we definitely are not “people who do these things.” Everyone is susceptible to desire, and the battle is incredibly intense. Naturally, we might slip up, especially early on. We might fall many times. Nonetheless, the fact that we are trying hard despite the difficulty and deep down want to win makes us admirable. No matter how many times we lose ourselves, we are fighters, not failures.
We must realize the overwhelming odds that every sin we have committed in this area was done out of weakness, not rebellion. A person who in his core wants to serve Hashem but was overpowered by the most difficult challenge that exists cannot be considered a sinner. He decided to fight back! How can he be bad? Every attempt he makes to serve Hashem makes Him incredibly proud.
In addition, rather than allowing our sins to define us, we must commit to remove them with teshuva and realize that they will be gone. In fact, sincerely accepting to do teshuva later even brings some atonement now. And even if we don’t succeed in doing a complete teshuva, Hashem will take care of our sins in other ways as long as we are trying. We must not let our sins hold us back, because they ultimately won’t define us if we put in the effort.
If we work on fighting back and identifying ourselves as people who try to do what’s right, before we know it, we will start thinking: “I don’t do these things. They are wrong. Giving in is beneath my dignity. This is just not what I do, even if my yetzer hara sometimes overpowered me. I fight back against forbidden desire no matter how hard it is, because I am a fighter!” Once we feel this way, we will quickly gain the upper hand.