Q:
If life is supposed to be a place of happiness, what happiness is there for the patient who leaves the physician’s office with bad news?
A:
Who said that happiness in this world will last forever? That’s number one.
But that person had his opportunity. Because you could also ask, what happiness is it for the man in the cemetery? The answer is up to the cemetery he should have enjoyed happiness. Who told him to wait?
Now, the truth is there is happiness because a man who leaves the doctor’s office with bad news, it’s better than a man who is in the funeral parlor. So anybody who feels discouraged let him walk by a cemetery and he’ll come home happy. A cemetery makes everybody happy because you’re better off. So it means there are people worse than you.
Rabbi Akiva when he was just married and his wife’s father had disowned her, they had no place to be, so they slept in a stable on hay. In the morning he was picking the hay out of his kallah’s hair so he told her like this: “Don’t worry,” he said. “Someday I’ll make you a golden crown.” That’s the way to talk to your wife by the way. “Someday I’ll buy you a golden crown.”
Just then there was a knock on the stable door and a beggar said “Could you lend me some hay? I don’t even have any hay at home.” So Rabbi Akiva said to his wife “You see? There are some people that don’t even have hay.”
So you see there is always somebody beneath you and one of the forms of being happy is to look at those who are less fortunate.
So if somebody ever is in a sad mood I would suggest he visit what used to be called the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital. Downstairs there’s a big ward of people who can’t walk, can’t move. Some of them can’t talk. Some can’t feed themselves. And spend an hour walking around there, feeding some of them. You’ll come out so cheerful that it’s better than going to a place of fun.
Of course you’ll say that’s a cynical way to do things but that’s how it is.
Or – I once said this here – go upstairs in any hospital and go into a room where there is a man patient who has trouble passing water. And watch how the nurse or the physician is trying to screw a rubber tube into him to let him urinate and see what pleasant sensations that causes. And then go into the hospital bathroom and urinate like a king! Ah! What a blessed luxury that is!
Now you know what happiness is! That’s what happiness is! There are plenty of people who don’t have that happiness and they’re sitting in hospitals and they’re suffering terrible pain. Here is a man who has a pipe in him for weeks! For weeks! Because he can’t urinate. It’s terrible. It’s Gehinom! He would give up everything. If he could be in your pants he would do anything! To pass water like a normal person is to him would be the acme of happiness.
So what are you depressed for? There is so much that we can learn from unfortunates. There are so many people beneath us.
Whenever you see somebody who has one arm or one leg, a man who is blind, just think what would he give to be in your place.
And therefore as I said before, whenever you’re down and out go by the cemetery and you’ll find people worse off than you are.
TAPE # 79 (June 1975)
