Where There Is No Vision

“Where there is no vision, the people run wild; but one who keeps the Torah is happy.” Opening “Where there is no vision, the people run wild.” Stop for a moment on that phrase: “run wild.” The verse does not say the people will be lost. It does not say they will fail. It says they will be wild: confused, scattered. Picture a man who works very hard, but his hands fly in every direction. He has no inner direction. The question is simple and sharp. Two people face the same opportunity. It is the same market, the same hour, the same situation. One of them sees a future. The other sees a risk. The opportunity did not change. So what did change? What is the real source of the great difference between their two lives? Seeing the Outside, Seeing the Inside Think of the scouts Moses sent into the Land of Israel, and of Joshua and Caleb among them. They all stood on the same ground. They all looked at the same giants and the same walled cities. The land was no different. But the other scouts saw only the outside: the size, the danger, the strength the eye can see. Joshua and Caleb saw the inside. They saw Hashem guiding every detail. They saw Hashem’s promise, hidden inside that very same reality. This is the basic difference. The physical eye catches only the shell of things. It sees the outside, the chance events, things “the way they look.” Inner sight comes from deep thought. It goes deeper and sees Hashem’s hand there, giving life to every single thing and bringing it into being at every moment. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, explains this in the section of the Tanya called “The Gate of Unity and Faith.” He teaches that nothing stands on its own. The power of the Creator inside every created thing is not hiding in some far corner of the world. That power is the world itself. You only need eyes to see it. Hard Work That Copies Yesterday Here the verse touches a very raw nerve for every young married man who sits and learns these words. You work. You strain. You do it in serving Hashem, in prayer and in Torah study, and you do it in daily life. And still, something does not move. To borrow the Torah’s phrase, you are doing “crushing labor.” It is the kind of toil where you convince yourself that it is going where it should. But deep inside, you know that you are just doing “yesterday’s work” all over again. Here is the simple truth. Hard work only multiplies what the eye already sees. If the eye sees only the outside, only risk, chance and what is missing, then double the effort will only keep that same reality going and make it bigger. Two hard-working hands gripping the wrong steering wheel will not bring you closer to where you want to go. They will only carry you away from it faster. This is what “the people run wild” means. The people are wild and scattered in their work. It is not because they are lazy. It is because they have no vision. The Real Investment Now we come to the main point. If you want to get rich, worldly people say, invest in property, in the market, in opportunities. There is truth in that. But the greatest investment of all is not in anything outside you. It is in changing the very way you see. When you change the way you see, everything else starts to look different. When a person’s eyes are open to the inside of things, every detail of his life becomes an opportunity, not a risk. Think of Elisha the prophet. He prayed for his young servant: “Hashem, please open his eyes so that he may see.” He did not change a single thing on the battlefield. He only opened the young man’s eyes. And suddenly the young man saw what had been there the whole time. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn of Lubavitch, a great Hasidic master of the last century, called the study of the inner, mystical side of the Torah “inner work.” He meant that it is not just study. It is a tool for refining the way we see. And above all, “The Gate of Unity and Faith” in the Tanya is the “investment” that changes everything. There you reflect deeply that every single thing in the world reveals Hashem’s infinite power. You come to see that there is no such thing as “chance.” There is only Hashem guiding every detail. Hashem is turning to you right now, at this very moment, in this very situation, and saying: “Here is an opportunity. This is where I want you.”