The Day Hashem Made

“This is the day Hashem has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Where Does Worry Come From? A man once asked his friend: “Where does worry come from?” It is a simple question. But sit with it for a moment. I am not asking what you worry about. Everyone has a long answer to that. I am asking where worry comes from. What is the soil it grows in? Look inside, and here is the answer. Worry lives in only two places: the past and the future. Memory and imagination. It lives in what already happened and is gone, and in what has not happened yet and may never happen at all. You bring something dead back to life, or you put on stage a figure that has not yet been born. Then you make yourself afraid of them. But in this moment, right now, what is there to be afraid of? But It Feels So Real You may wonder: if worry is really just imagination, how can it be so strong? How can it feel so real, and weigh so heavily on the heart? The answer is that this is exactly the power of the imagination. It paints pictures so vivid that they seem to be reality. It takes a painful piece of the past and replays it again and again, as if it were happening now. It takes a thought about an uncertain future and dresses it up with details and colors, until we shrink back from it as if it were something real. But there is only one reality, and neither imagination nor memory can touch it. That reality is the present. Today The Torah says that we must keep Hashem’s commandments “today.” Serving Hashem happens today. Not yesterday, and not tomorrow. This guidance the Torah gives us for serving Hashem is also guidance for the inner self. The place where you can live, work and be joyful is here, in the present. The past now exists only in our memory. Of course, we can learn from it. But sinking into it with sadness and bitterness is something else. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, writes about this: “Let a person take this to heart: now is not the time for real sadness, not even for worry over serious wrongdoings.” What happened, happened. The work is now. And the future? It is not in our hands at all. All our worry about it rests on one belief: that we face it alone. But that belief is false. Hashem is present at every time and in every place. As the mystical teachings say: “There is no place empty of Him.” Hashem guides every detail of our lives. He does not ignore the next moment. He fills it. If so, what is there to worry about? Joy Inside the Day The Book of Psalms says: “This is the day Hashem has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Look closely at the last words: “let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Not about it. Not because of it. In it. Joy is not found in waiting for what will come. It is not found in looking back at what has passed. It is found inside the day itself, inside the present. When you are truly inside the moment, that is exactly where you meet what the Torah says about Jacob: “And behold, Hashem was standing over him.” This is not the memory of Hashem revealing Himself, and not a hope that He will reveal Himself someday. It is Hashem truly revealed, right now. This is not a slogan. It is an address. Worry lives in the past and the future. The present moment is the one address it can never reach.