Is my reality fixed, or does it depend on how I see it?

Rabbi Landau explains that life doesn’t simply happen to you; it happens the way you see it. “Reality isn’t fixed,” he says, and he points to quantum mechanics, which says that it doesn’t exist until you look at it.

A house is bricks, wood and paint. So why does it feel whole? Because your mind brings it together into one. Life, he teaches, starts as a cloud of possibilities, and the moment you see it, it collapses into one reality. Hashem holds it all in potential.

That is the meaning of the verse “Pose’ach es yadecha u’masbia l’chol chai ratzon,” Hashem opens His hand and satisfies every desire. He opens His hand, and it takes shape according to your desire. So stop living like reality is locked. “It bends to the eye that sees it.” Your mind can turn chaos into order, pain into power, and a scattered life into destiny.

Also answered in this teaching

Can two people see the same situation as different realities?

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that the spies and Caleb and Joshua saw exactly the same land. The spies saw a land that devours those who live in it; Caleb and Joshua saw “we can surely go up.” The same land, two ways of looking, two realities.

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

Surface claim

Reality is not locked; it takes shape according to how you see it.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that when reality seems fixed, a person is nothing more than its prisoner, and choice and inner work seem pointless.

Underlying need or longing

A person wants to know that his life can change. Rabbi Landau teaches that Hashem holds everything in potential and opens His hand.

Deepest human truth

Hashem’s hand is open. Your desire and your way of seeing decide what takes shape from it.

More questions from this teaching

• What does “You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing” mean?