The Day Is Short, the Work Is Great

A Question to Begin Ask yourself, my dear young married friend: where do you see yourself ten years from now? Almost everyone has an answer. In ten years I will be a Torah scholar. In ten years I will be a truly devoted Hasidic Jew, a person of fine character traits, filled with awe of Hashem. It is all clear. It is all beautiful. Then the morning comes. You did not get enough sleep. The children are noisy. Your head feels heavy. And this day, this one single day, seems so small and so meaningless next to that big, faraway dream. So another day goes by. And another. And another. Our Sages Said “The Day” In Ethics of the Fathers, a classic collection of our Sages’ sayings, we find a few short words as sharp as a knife: “He used to say: The day is short, the work is great, and the workers are lazy.” Stop at the first words: “the day.” Not “life is short.” Not “the year is short.” Not “the decade flies by.” The day. Why does the Sage stress the smallest unit of all, the single day? Because the Sage knows something we forget. A decade is nothing but days, thousands of single days, one by one. What we call “the future” is not a separate thing, some far-off idea that will show up one day. The future is only the sum of what is done today. A Note on Inner Work: No Day Is Neutral And here is the new idea that cuts right to the gut: no day is neutral. Every day either builds or destroys. Every hour of Torah study is a brick. Every prayer said with real attention is another brick. And every hour swallowed up by emptiness is a brick that was never laid, and maybe worse than that. Our Sages taught about money that every small coin adds up to a large sum. The very same is true in spiritual life: every moment adds up. Rabbi Akiva, the great Talmudic sage, once saw water that had carved into a rock. He learned from it that steady effort wears away even the hardest thing. Not in one leap, not in one great burst of inspiration, but drop by drop, day by day. The Book of Psalms says: “Today, if you will listen to His voice.” The holy Zohar, the classic work of Jewish mysticism, teaches on this verse that “today” is the day of decision itself. Not tomorrow. Not in ten years. Today. The Evil Inclination’s Trick Do you know the trick of the evil inclination, the inner voice that pulls us toward wrong? It does not come and tell you, “Don’t study.” It is smarter than that. It shows you how great the work is: the mountain of books, the size of the task, the gap between who you are now and who you wanted to be. Then it freezes you under all that weight. The Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, teaches us about the “in-between person.” This is the figure the Tanya holds up as a model of inner work for all of us. His heroism is not in reaching great perfection all at once. It is in winning each day. This day. This hour. This moment. Don’t dream about the righteous person you will be in ten years. Work on being today’s in-between person. A Closing Word of Strength So I ask you, my dear young married friend, one simple question: What did you do today? Not in ten years. Today. Because your great dream for ten years from now is built only from your answer to this question, the way you answer it today, and tomorrow, and the day after. A decade is nothing but days, thousands of single days, and each one either builds or tears down. The power to shape your future is here, now, in your hands. Today.