Do I have to escape my everyday life to find my purpose?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau teaches: “Stop trying to escape your life to find your purpose.” If you think peace is found only on the mountaintops, “you are missing the entire point of your existence.”
We all have the fantasy, he says: if I could just go away, if I could just meditate on a mountain, then I would be spiritual. “That’s a mistake. You weren’t sent to this world to float above it. You were sent here to fix it.”
The darkness in your life, “the stress, the difficult people, the heavy days,” is not there to distract you from your mission. “That’s your mission.” The challenge isn’t to fly up to the heavens. “The challenge is to stay right here, in the now, in the mess, and turn that into something bright.”
Related concepts: Purpose · A mission with your name on it
In A Soul at Peace: The Hanukkah Light That Sits Low
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
Rabbi Landau teaches that purpose is not found by escaping life.
Fear, vulnerability, or tension
Stress, difficult people, and heavy days feel like they are blocking a person from being spiritual.
Underlying need or longing
People long for peace and imagine it waits on a mountaintop, far from the mess.
Deepest human truth
You were sent here to fix the world, not to float above it. The difficulties are not a distraction from your mission; they are your mission.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: The Cycle of Renewal: Elul, Holidays, and Light · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz