How can I give to others when I feel completely empty or burnt out?

Rabbi Landau teaches that the idea that you must recharge before you can give is “the biggest lie we tell ourselves.” We treat ourselves like a machine with a battery: I feel empty, I can’t give anything until I charge myself first. But, he teaches, “you’re not a tank, you’re a pipe.”

A tank has to be filled before it gives. A pipe doesn’t. “A pipe can be completely dry, cracked, depressed, and the moment it opens, the water rushes through, and the pipe becomes wet from the very thing it delivers.” So you don’t need to feel whole or ready before you bring light into the world. “Creation doesn’t come from a fullness, it comes from openness,” because “you’re not the source, you’re the channel.”

That, he explains, is Chanukah. They didn’t wait to feel ready. They lit anyway. “They opened the pipe and Hashem sent the oil. You don’t light because you have oil, you discover oil because you light.” The light comes “from the courage to light the wick even when you think you have no oil left.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Rabbi Landau teaches that a person is a pipe, not a tank, and does not need to be full before giving.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

A person feels empty, with no energy, and believes he can’t give anything until he charges himself first.

What may be behind it

Where does the light really come from?

Not from fullness but from openness. You are not the source; you are the channel.

Deepest human truth

The pipe becomes wet from the very thing it delivers. In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau advises: the next time you feel empty, don’t wait to be filled; do one small good deed precisely out of the emptiness, and the lighting reveals the oil you never knew you had.

More questions from this teaching

• What does it mean that you don’t light because you have oil, you discover oil because you light?