Do I need to prove my worth to justify my existence?

Rabbi Landau teaches that your existence needs no justification. Ask people the point of their existence and they'll say, “I'm a father, I'm a provider, I'm a husband, I'm a wife. I have a purpose.” But you existed before any of that.

Before the kids, before the job, before the title, before anything happened to you, you were already here. “So none of that can be the justification.” The point of existence is existence. “No justification is needed. No dependency required. Just being.”

King Solomon looked at all the labor, skill, and achievement a person does to prove he belongs here and to justify his place on this earth, and called it chasing wind. “What you do says nothing about whether you should exist.”

“Your existence needs no proof, it never did,” Rabbi Landau says. “Stop justifying your existence. Just exist. That was always the whole point.”

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

Surface claim

Your existence needs no justification.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

When a person's worth rests on his roles, then if one of them is shaken, he feels his whole existence is shaken.

What may be behind it

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that every role came after you were already here, so any justification that rests on a later role is a house built on sand.

Deepest human truth

Hashem brings you into being at every moment because He wants you, not because of what you have done. A son does not earn his place; he is already there.

More questions from this teaching

• What did King Solomon mean by “chasing wind”?