Growing Brighter, Until Full Day

The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, growing brighter and brighter until the full light of day. Opening “The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, growing brighter and brighter until the full light of day.” Young man, stop for a moment on these words. King Solomon does not say that the path of the righteous is light. He says it is growing brighter. That is a process. It is movement, growth. But life seems to say otherwise. Anyone who looks honestly at his own life, in spirituality and in the material world, knows that the road is not a straight line of light getting stronger and stronger. There are downturns. There are falls. There is real darkness. There are mornings when it is hard to get out of bed. There are stretches when it seems that everything is lost. So what did King Solomon see that we do not see? Two Kinds of Darkness There is one kind of darkness: the darkness of night coming down. This is the night that comes after sunset and sinks lower and lower, until it is heavy and black. It is a darkness of ending, of going down, of fading away. And there is another kind of darkness: the darkness just before dawn. This is the deepest darkness there is, right before the sun comes up. To eyes that do not know, the two look exactly the same. But by nature they are completely different. One is going down, and the other is rising. The Zohar, the great book of Jewish mysticism, teaches: “There is a darkness that has light standing right behind it.” The light stands right behind that darkness. It is close to it, waiting for it. When the verse says “the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn,” it is speaking about the second kind. It is not talking about a person who has never fallen. It is talking about a person whose darkness is the kind that is “growing brighter.” It is a darkness that already holds the full day inside it. The Fall Is Part of the Plan “A righteous person falls seven times and gets up again.” It does not say, “A righteous person never falls.” It says, “He falls seven times.” He falls, and he falls again. And the verse counts this as praise. The Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, taught that there is nothing in the world so small that Hashem does not guide it personally. If so, then a fall is not a mistake that slipped through the cracks. That is true whether the fall is spiritual, physical or financial. It is part of Hashem’s plan. It is “a descent for the sake of a higher ascent.” The fall itself is the preparation. It is the vessel, the road that leads to a greater rise. This is what a fall teaches a person who has eyes to see. Not “I failed,” but “I am in chapter two.” Not “Everything is lost,” but “I am in the darkness just before dawn.” What Really Holds Us Back But here there is a delicate point, and we need to be precise about it. The real obstacle is not the darkness itself. The obstacle is the fear of the darkness. It is the fear of losing, the fear of falling, the fear of going “bankrupt,” spiritually or materially. That fear freezes a person and keeps him from moving toward great things. Because “you cannot play big while you are protecting the small.” Someone who puts all his energy into guarding what he already has cannot grow. The fear of going down is exactly what keeps a person from rising. The Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, teaches that even when a person falls and feels that he is in darkness, he must not lose heart. This is not because the situation is not hard. It is because heavy sadness and a sense of defeat, as Rabbi Schneur Zalman calls it, close the door on the light that is waiting on the other side. Closing “Though I have fallen, I have risen. Though I sit in darkness, Hashem is my light.” This verse is not a vague promise. It describes an action: “I fell, I rose.” It does not say, “I rose because I never fell.” It says, “I rose because I fell.” The fall is the ground the rising stands on. “I sit in darkness,” and I know that “Hashem is my light.”