Why does a new excuse appear every time I remove the old one?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau answers with a story. A man came to him with a great idea and real potential, and one problem: he couldn't afford a marketing budget. Today that marketing is free; AI does it in minutes. “And he's still stopped in the exact same place, because it was never about the marketing. That was just the excuse of the season.”
“Remove that excuse, and another one appears,” he explains, “because the blockage was never outside him.” As long as the real obstacle is inside, clearing away one outside reason only makes room for the next.
That is why waiting for the right tool doesn't work. Our sages said “Yahiv chochmah lechakimei,” Hashem gives wisdom to those who already have wisdom, “not for those who are waiting for the right tool to finally get started.” The way forward is to start moving now.
Related concepts: Motivation · Inspiration has to become a deed
In A Soul at Peace: Wisdom Is Given to the Wise
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
Every season brings a new excuse, because the blockage was never outside.
What may be behind it
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that the real inner obstacle is a lack of will: “Where a person's will is, that is where he is.”
Deepest human truth
Help from above strengthens a person who is already moving; it does not start him.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: Technology, Noise, and Human Identity · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz