Q:
How can one overcome anxieties?
A:
That’s a big and broad question. And the answer is to learn da’as. You have to learn seichel. דעה חכמה לנפשך.
But it’s like saying, how can one become a physician? Now you can’t come in tonight and get an answer and walk out with a certificate and a license to practice medicine. You have to put in years.
You can overcome anxiety, but you have to be willing to listen. There are lectures, there are books, there are courses in Torah, first of all how to understand the happiness in life. Life is full of happiness. And we’ll learn to concentrate on the glory of being alive, on the many things you possess.
And after a while, you start minimizing those things that you considered important. And many anxieties will begin to shrink until they’re no longer visible. Instead their place will be taken by great forms of enjoyment that will now loom up before your eyes.
It’s a glorious world, like Hakodosh Boruch Hu said, וירא אלקים את כל אשר עשה והנה טוב מאד. It’s a glorious world! But how many people bother to study that?
The glories of summer. Summer is a glorious opportunity to see the happiness of life and winter too but you have to specialize in it. So how to overcome anxieties is learn the right kind of Torah instruction.
(May 1981)
