The Fool Spends All His Spirit

“A fool lets out all his spirit, but the wise one holds it back and values it.” Opening King Solomon writes in the Book of Proverbs: “A fool lets out all his spirit, but the wise one holds it back and values it.” The simple meaning is clear. The fool pours out everything in his heart. The wise person holds his spirit in. But let’s look closely. What does that last word really mean? The verse does not say that the wise person “silences” his spirit. It does not say that he “crushes” it. It uses a word of praise, a word of importance and worth. Why praise? What is it doing here? The Soul’s Budget Think of a young married man, a working family man, at the start of his day. Each morning Hashem gives him back his soul. Along with it, Hashem gives him a portion of inner strength: the strength to feel, the strength to be patient, the strength to focus, the strength to greet people with a warm and bright face. This is not an endless treasure. It is a “budget.” It is measured, it is daily, and it is limited. The question is: what does he spend it on? Our Sages teach that a person who gets angry is “as if he worshiped idols.” Why is anger so serious? Anger is not only a bad character trait in itself. It is waste. Every time a person explodes in anger, every time he feels insulted and holds on to it, every time he lets a small frustration steal his peace of mind, he spends precious coins from his daily “budget.” Those coins will not come back. When the afternoon comes, he arrives there empty. A Parable Picture a man who receives his pay on Friday morning. By noon he has spent all of it on things he does not need. When the Sabbath comes, he has nothing left to honor it with. The fool inside each of us works in exactly this way. He saves nothing for the end of the day. He “lets out all his spirit.” He spends all his spirit, all his energy, all his strength on every little thing that sets him off: a traffic jam on the way, an unpleasant remark at work, an argument over nothing. In the end he comes home, and he has no warm face left for his wife. He has no patience for his child. He has no focus left for his evening Torah study. The animal soul, the part of us driven by raw impulse, got exactly what it wanted, and he never even noticed. The Turning Point: A Wise Plan This is exactly where the verse teaches something new. “The wise one holds it back and values it.” The wise person does more than hold himself in. He values the spirit inside him. He appreciates it. He understands what it is worth. He knows that it is a precious asset, and he will not waste it on nothing. This is not just keeping quiet. It is an active decision: “My inner strength is saved. It will be used for the things that deserve it.” This is exactly what Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, teaches: the mind must rule over the heart. The mind does not crush the heart. It serves as the heart’s advisor. It checks every emotional “expense” and asks: Is this worth the price? Is this anger, this insult, this irritation really worth one of my daily “coins”? A Final Point: Eight Days of Madness There is one more sharp point here. Sometimes a person thinks, “I’ll blow up just this once, and tomorrow I’ll start fresh.” But it does not work that way. One big outburst of anger does not cause damage for just one day. It is like a deficit in a bank account: it carries over. Inner strength that was burned up in one day does not come back right away. A person can find himself sunk in tiredness, his spiritual life drained, for many days afterward. These are the “eight days of madness,” as the text calls it. Here the hint to the miracle of Hanukkah comes all by itself. One small jar of oil, pure and carefully kept, was enough for eight days. When you guard the “jar of oil” of your inner strength, and you do not open it for every passing wind, even a little of it can give light for far longer than you ever imagined.