Ten Minutes of Meaning (Part 102): Shut Your Mouth - Mesillas Yesharim

[Music] good morning everyone and welcome back to our weekly ten minutes of meaning where we get together to review the messages that are so informative inspiring instructive in our time of ramos shakhim lutatha though he wrote it 700 years ago it's just as relevant and it's just as instructive as for today and it is how to live our path of our best lives how to achieve what we're here for how to realize our potential how to be our best selves i want to thank our dear friends honey and lenny grunstein in memory who sponsor the series in memory of hani's father mr aaron tambour ben yitzchak thank you for the generous sponsorship if you'd like to sponsor a particular shirt please email lee at brsonline brsonline.org brsonline.org let's jump back in we began with the heroes you should all know this by now we review it each and every week zahiris is a life of mindfulness caution being present being thoughtful in all of our speech and all of our thoughts and all of our actions and everything that we do we then moved over to a life of his resources alacrity zeal enthusiasm how do we set goals and make resolutions to achieve them how do we create measures and metrics in order to measure how well we're doing in our growth in them zurich alacrity zeal be on fire go pursue with great energy and enthusiasm whatever your stated goals are in life and then nikias nikiya says how to move things over from the battleground to conquer territory conquered territory still needs to be defended but it's conquered as opposed to the battleground where each and every day we're battling in our lives and we talked about that in the world of eating the world of profanity the world of what we look at the world of anger so that's what we're up to has been delineating several different types of anger the person who gets angry really quickly and takes a long time to calm down a person who takes a long time to get angry but then a long time to come down the person who takes a long time to get angry and calms down very quickly all the different ways that anger can manifest itself but what they all have in common is that anger is categorically bad anger clouds our judgment anger sabotages our relationships and our success anger is a pure emotion there's no intellect the animal parts of the brain light up fight or flight and the thoughtful intellectual parts of the brain shut down and when we get angry we're no longer thinking clearly we're no longer thinking straight we're no longer thinking about what is right or best or how to achieve the outcome we claim we want the anger takes over and therefore it's categorically bad as we've said many times all other character traits are called midos me doesn't measure they belong in our repertoire of life in some measure but anger anger doesn't belong whatsoever anger doesn't belong at all let's get back into the text so the ram khaled writes uh um rabbi is right in tractate he suspends the earth on nothingness do you know why the world endures in the merit of what does this world continue and you could read this here not the world as in the greater broader world you could read it your world and my world our world in what merit does our world find balance does it continue does it sustain and the answer is excuse me do you know the health and the wellness of the world of our personal world our internal world depends on our ability to close our mouth bowling pin to curb our mouth during an argument not always do we have to respond not always do we have to shoot back a zinger not always do we have to come out back even stronger than the way the person emailed or texted or called or spoke to us a person who feels the anger well within them somebody's been poe game you're covered somebody has dishonored you attacked you blasphemed you slandered you somebody has said something about someone you care deeply about a spouse children the anger grows inside us and we're tempted to lash out to yell to fight back to tell them where they can go and where they belong but you know the whole world the greater world exists in the merit and our personal well-being and our personal world will uh continue in the merit of our ability to be boley mispiv to close our mouths you don't have to respond you don't have to respond the gemara says that leola my person should always be loving to be insulted and not fling an insult back to be attacked and to be quiet and passive and not attack back not because we believe in turning the other cheek in judaism or in torah but because we believe what will it achieve to escalate a fight is to lose our own sense of dignity to lose our own sense of self not only does it not accomplish anything positive but we self-destruct we sabotage our own selves we forfeit our own godliness our own humanity our own integrity our own dignity what does that achieve what does it accomplish and so the world the greater world in our own personal world exists because you can suspend the whole world the whole world's existence and wellness depends the ability to close your mouth shut your lips don't have to respond you know it took many years into my life to learn and to realize that you don't have to answer every text or email that comes your way generally it's good to be respectful and responsive and to do so in in good time and i try my best but you know just as only someone who speaks to you respectfully deserves a respectful response so to an er in email and text messages and every other form of electronic communication today only someone who communicates respectfully it doesn't mean you have to love every message but it means the messaging has to be deserving of an answer better to keep your mouth closed than to write a scathing answer back that gets forwarded and posted and shared and all of a sudden what was a misunderstanding or could have been communicated differently or someone was in a bad mood for a moment escalates to a fight that can last a lifetime people post on social media the comments and the fights you don't have to answer i engage social media i try to use it to spread messages and torah and light and inspiration and often people disagree and write comments most of them overwhelmingly respectful some not you don't have to answer they're called trolls for a reason they're trolling they're trying to draw people in to a debate and to a fight you don't have to answer close your mouth because the moment that we get angry and our our heart rate increases our pulse increases our blood pressure increases our sweat glands are working overtime and our brain shuts down and then you write a response you write a post you write an email you react in person in a way which is irreparable in a way which is difficult if not impossible to recover from and the one who loses out the real victim is not the other the real victim is ourselves the real victim is us um the great sage the great rabbi hillel really was a model continues to be a model to us in this way the hell of the elder regarding anger he never became offended over anything he never allowed the anger to well inside himself he was entirely in control he was cleansed he was lucky it was conquered territory instead of a battlefield he never allowed himself to get angry even when someone said something or did something even when the way the world worked with traffic or a late flight or the weather or things did not react the way he hoped or planned he was entirely in control he never allowed himself to get angry and everything is enhanced everything is enriched our relationships our peace of mind our mental spiritual physical well-being everything is enhanced and enriched when we can control our sense of anger not just a battlefield that we're tempted but we overcome but conquered territory that we're able we have to defend it any day we can lose it but that we're able to battle and fight and we're able to rid ourselves of even the instinct even the impulse to get angry to fly off the handle here is referring to a famous story that talmud gives us about an agitator who made a bet that he could get hilla to lose his calm and so he waited until it was friday air of shabbos when hillary would be bathing and preparing for shabbos and hill was in the bath and he knocked on the door and he'll came to the door and he asked a nonsensical question hello got back in the bath he knocked on the door he asked a nonsensical question and he did this time and again waiting to agitate to aggravate waiting to cause hillel to fly off the handle and he'll just calm cool and collect each and every time interacted and engaged with this frustrating individual and the man turned to hill and said hello you caused me to lose a bet but that was hello he won the bet of himself even if others lost their bet on him because he always remained calm cool collect he never ever gave in and that is our challenge foreign even when it comes to a mitzvah even when it comes to pursuit of something righteous or noble or just we cannot give in to anger but even a teacher with a student a parent with a child velocity yes yes it doesn't mean we can't reprimand it doesn't mean that there's no accountability it doesn't mean sometimes punitive measures don't have to be taken but it means we have to do with state of calm we have to do it with the goal and the motivation of the best interest of the student or of the child it can never be with anger it has to be with the goal to condition and to drive someone on the proper path writes the same thing even when we are allowed to look like we are outraged we can never have rage child runs in the middle of the street a child sticks their finger in the outlet you sometimes have to raise your voice sometimes you have to grab their wrist you sometimes have to react in a way that shows just how extreme the circumstances but it has to be entirely an act it has to be an external reaction it cannot be driven by an internal feeling upon him the the anger of the face velocileve but the heart has to become cool and collect so even when you have to react strongly to a child or react strongly to outrage to somebody who does something outrageous it has to be a reaction it has to be a strategy but it can never be reflective of a true feeling of impulse vomer king solomon the wisest of all men told us the fool is killed by anger don't hasten to become angry in spirit anger will dwell inside of you a person the the fool is killed by anger we're killed we destroy marriages and our children are driven away we drive away with friends think about politics people have been discussing politics which has been so toxic and so divisive it doesn't mean we can't have strong feelings i have strong feelings about the candidate i think will best bring about the policy results that i think are critically important in this country in israel and i have respectful dialogue and debate and try to persuade in a private context not as a rabbi but to get filled with anger or frustration to lash out to call names to marginalize to make ad hominem attacks all that does is destroy it kills it kills relationships and it drive wedges people walk into board meet board rooms and they kill negotiations and they kill deals because they got angry bishops in fact the person is identified you want to know and learn about a person here's the way to know them bikisa bacoso what happens when they drink person who drinks a little what happens how do they behave when they have a little alcohol in them the kiso their pocket their wallet how is their budget allocated you learn everything about someone and picasso what does someone get angry about and how do they act in anger you learn everything about someone so that concludes the section of moving over from the battlefield to the conquered territory this attribute of anger anger is categorically bad toxic self-destructive it sabotages our own health and wellness and it forfeits our very dignity godliness and humanity i have a dear friend a dear friend who has a app on his phone and he tracks how many days in a row he can go without getting angry and he goes sometimes single digits he's made double digits and please god triple digits of days in a row and you know by tracking it and challenging himself in this area and challenging us as friends with him he creates a mindfulness and a consciousness and when he's tempted because his kid did something or someone said something where he's particularly over tired and has no extra patience he thinks about that that momentum he's built he thinks about that record he set and he doesn't want to break it and that in itself is able to motivate to keep to calm to go one more day to think about a better way to react a much more productive response to have because anger's never productive anger never helps anger never does anything and that's a challenge we should all take for ourselves i will try to share the app in the comments i have to get from him which one he uses but we should all be soccer we should all merit to never get angry and in that calmness to be able to uh keep our mouths closed to be bolem bolim piv to keep our mouth closed and to be able to absorb the insult and absorb the harshness never respond with anger and in that way enrich our lives in every which way again if you want to sponsor a particular shir please email lee at prsonline.org stay with us in 15 minutes 8 45 living with muna tonight 9 o'clock first time ever behind the bmw will be on location at boca's newest restaurant roadhouse interviewing it's a new chef seth warshaw that's tonight nine o'clock until then stay happy stay healthy stay holy have a fantastic day