Chapter 10 - Don’t Despair
Think about the five best mitzvos and five worst aveiros you committed over the past year. How does that make you feel?
Many people get depressed when they try this. This indicates a problem in perspective: they feel that their bad deeds far overshadow any good that they have done. In fact, while they would struggle to come up with five mitzvos they did that they consider special, they would have no problem naming more than five sins that they are dreadfully embarrassed about. This outlook makes them unhappy with who they are.
For some people, the issue is exacerbated because they view their good deeds as out of character yet view their sins as indicators of their true selves. When they sin, they feel, “This shows that I am a bad person. I am a sinner who has no control over himself.” Because they don’t tell themselves that they really are good people who slipped, they label themselves as bad. They refuse to accept that human beings make mistakes, and that mistakes do not define a person. In short, they demand perfection from themselves and are crushed by any error they make. Because they cannot live up to their impossible expectations, they feel like failures.
This is problematic because it makes people more likely to continue to sin. When people feel that they are bad, they get depressed and are not ready to fight their desires. With the many challenges we face, this can be quite dangerous.
Further, viewing themselves as sinners after a few mistakes turns sinning into a habit. People who view themselves as bad do not change. They accept their label as an unfortunate truth they can do nothing about — thinking that even if they control themselves now, they will still be sinners because of their previous actions — so they continue to sin. They exert no effort to win their battles because they feel they would be missing out on pleasures with no gain in return. They think it is too late to turn things around and they feel hopelessly devalued.
Even worse, identifying themselves as people who do these sins causes them to live up to that label. They do not hold themselves up to any standard because instead of developing the requisite feelings for resisting sin — “I don’t do these things” — they feel that this is the way they act. And even if they are not happy with how they have been acting, they still follow the path of least resistance — to continue acting in ways consistent with their self-image.
Another problem that emerges when someone is prone to these negative feelings is that when he is in the midst of a challenge and he slips a little, he is far more likely to give up. Though the battle is far from over and he has not lost, he feels no motivation to continue fighting because he thinks, “I’ve already failed anyway, so I might as well give in completely.” He is like a dieter who, after eating a small slice of chocolate cake, caves in completely and eats the rest of the cake. The person who has slipped up overrates his error. Deciding that all is already lost, he gives in, thinking, “I might as well enjoy myself.”
This line of thinking is a mistake. The correct way for us to view ourselves is as good people who “do not do that” when it comes to sins, even though we might sometimes stumble. Although our deeds do have consequences, we must not label ourselves as bad even if we sin badly many times. Instead, we must realize that we are good people who try to do what is right. Even if we did many things that we now realize were foolish, that does not make us bad. (Rabbi Ben-Zion Shafier, Shmuz 56: “The Death of Right and Wrong”)