It has been a while since I have last posted. I was contemplating toning down the intensity, writing "lighter" both in content and style, but I have decided that I will continue to write things as I see them, without padding it for popular consumption. Here, at least, I can write without external censor. I don't know how often I can find time to write, but when I do I will write it real.

Drive, Dammit!

As so many of these stories go, there was once a wagon driver. Business was not too great, but it was enough to live on, and what more could one demand? Living conditions in those days didn't allow the luxury of an extended education, so when his son was 12 years old the wagon driver decided to teach his son the profession. He began by teaching his son how to harness the horses to the wagon. The son was quite intelligent, and caught on quickly, but being a on the lazy side, preferred to travel inside the wagon instead of up on top with his father. Unfortunately, the wagon driver passed away young, passing the reigns of the family business into the young, inexperienced hands of his son.

The big day arrived. It was time for the son to take his first passenger. At the crack of dawn the passenger was ready to go. They loaded the wagon, and the son went about the familiar task of harnessing the horses. After he finished, he jumped up onto the drivers seat, the passenger safely in the back. After a few seconds, the son jumped off his seat and went back to the harness. He untied and retied, pulled here and there, and after making a few adjustments, climbed back up. A minute or two later, still not having moved an inch, he jumped down again. To the puzzlement of the passenger, the previous scene repeated itself. After checking over the harnesses and making a few superficial adjustments the driver jumped back up to his seat. Still, the wagon is immobile.

Seeing the scene begin to repeat itself yet again, the passenger called out "What's the problem?".

"I'll tell you the truth," confided the son. "This is the first time I am taking the wagon anywhere myself. When I went with my father, may his memory be blessed, we would harness the horses and then my dad would jump on his seat and off we went. Just like that. I don't understand why the horses are not moving today... The harnesses are fine!"

"Listen closely, my dear friend," the passenger responded, "You can harness the horses from now until hell freezes over, but until you tell the horses when and where to go - you are no wagon driver."

----

I am that foolish son.

I once thought the son was the "Mashpiyim" of the 21st century, so intent on creating and affirming our connection with the Rebbe that they neglected, whether out of negligence or sheer ignorance, to do anything with that strongest of connections, to teach when and where to go. I have since realized that that son is me.

So full of ideals, so convinced, so connected. Yet, strangely immobile. Constantly strengthening my convictions but never going anywhere. Never changing myself, becoming more than I am. Never leaving the barnyard. Instead, I busy myself with the harness - my own, as well as others. Fixing something that was never broken.

To make it worse, my paralysis does not result from preoccupation. My preoccupation is the result of the paralysis. I don't want to leave the barnyard. And so, I make myself busy.

On Shlichus in Frankfurt-am-Main Germany the thought would often occur to me: People will do anything, even go to a warzone, to avoid looking themselves in the mirror. It is easier to give a Shiur, or get busy with the not-yet-Frum youth, then to look myself in the mirror and change myself.

Enough.

To be a true wagon driver, one must drive.

World conquest starts at home.
-- Fardak

PS I originally wrote this in the plural, including you as a companion in my foolishness. In all honesty, I don't know that you are one. So I rewrote it in the singular. But if this does describe you, take it to heart. To persist in folly knowingly is a crime unparalleled.

Stand Above Time - Do Teshuva

I was cruising around my hard drive and I came across I thought on Teshuva. Unedited, it may be a bit rough but the thought is there and thats what counts:

Teshuva (loosely translated as Repentence) consists of two basic components, without which it is not accepted.

1. Regret for the misdeed.
2. A Resolution never to act in that manner again.

Why is it important that he resolve never to do it again? What relevance do his future actions have on his past? We can't answer that his future misdeeds reveal that his regret was insincere, because firstly, the resolution is considered a separate component, not a proof of the first, and secondly, that fails to take into account the reality that circumstances change. If I truly regret my act, what more can you demand?

In order to understand this, it is important to ask why Teshuva can help in the first place. What's done is done. Nothing you will say or do will change that. How many times have we said or felt "You may be sorry, but that doesn't change the facts." How can my actions today effect something which occured yesterday?

The answer is that the past is only untouchable because we are bound by the limitations of time. Teshuva reaches to a point which is higher than time, and thus is not bound by it. Today, tomorrow or last year are all the same. Sounds Kabballistic? Let me translate that into English. (This is not to say that it is not true in a mystical/spiritual sense. I am only going to explain the concept as it exists in our reality.) In our world what that means is the following (and this is why resolving to never repeat your misdeed is crucial.):

When I fulfill the two conditions of Teshuva, Regret and Resolve, in essence what is happening is I am at a point, in a state of mind, in which I will NEVER do this thing again, regardless. I have resolved not to let changes in circumstance effect me in regards to this deed. No matter how you tempt me, I am wholeheartedly resolved to resist the temptation. Thus, I am, quite literally, above time. In this aspect of my life, past, present and future have no relevance.

This is the reason why in order to truly do Teshuva, in order to turn over a new leaf, to gain forgiveness for yesterday, it is necessary commit for the future.

Because when you do, you stand above Time, in a place where past, present and future are one.

A Defining Moment of Clarity

Being a man with world conquest on my mind, the following insight was one which will inevitably influence the course I take. It occured to me during a conversation with my grandfather on the clash of cultures we are witnessing on the world stage.

It is said that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. A similar statement can be made of ideologies. None have been able to withstand first contact with human nature. Communism is a recent example, but many of the more unsavory Jewish Kings of old, whose authority and responsibility rested on the just word of G-d, are proof of this as well. The vaunted ideals upon which these rulers based their right to rule never saw the light of day. This is not to say ideals can not succeed; they do, however, seem to have a hard time catching on and staying around for too long. Their application requires struggle. Capitalism has enjoyed a career which defies this model. It is being taken up in more places, and by more people every day. It has persevered and grown where all other ideals have failed to gain widespread support.

Ironically, capitalism's one redeeming factor pragmatically, is, philosophically, its fatal flaw. And therein lies the reason we can never accept capitalism as anything more than a day job. For where other ideologies' attempts to exalt the people may fail on the battlefield of human nature, capitalism perseveres not by its successes in said goal - but by its inherent surrender to failure before the first shot is fired. Capitalism thrives on the self interest of the individual instead of breeding selflessness. It seeks not to elevate the people, but to embrace that baseness which is the bane of idealism. It glorifies the self and thus loses it's soul. This can never be what it means to be human.

The soul of man is capable of more than just pitiful self-interest - it can rise to the heights of dazzling self-sacrifice. Not by dying for ideals - but by selflessly living for them. And that is what it means to be an idealist. To live for something higher than self. The human nature will change in the future so that all may live this life, but for now we can each choose to live for our ideals, to "Live in the Times of Moshiach."

The past must be mastered for the future to unfold.

-- Fardak

A New Blog is Born

BH

As if there are not already enough blogs clogging the arteries of cyberspace, tonight another blog was born. I would like to dedicate this post, and thirty two moments of silence to this modern day miracle, the delicate, marvelous, emotional event of a newborn blog taking its first breath. And no diapers, I'm told. Weeeeeee.