Have you ever thought: "If only I had such-and-such a thing, or were in such-and-such a situation, I would be happy"?

Generally, this is a fallacious line of reasoning. Joy does not depend on what we have or don't have, but on how we perceive what we have and what we lack.

What better example than that of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? Did they lack anything? No. And yet they managed to complicate things entirely on their own. There was only one tree whose fruit G‑d had forbidden them, but they couldn't resist the temptation to eat from precisely that tree! And to make matters worse, according to one opinion in our tradition, the tree in question was the grapevine; they needed only to abstain from its fruit for a few hours until Shabbat began, make Kiddush over the wine, and thus inaugurate an eternal Shabbat. Why couldn't they wait?

It is part of human nature to want exactly what we cannot have, and to fail to value what we do have.

It seems incredible — though it happens all too often — but when G‑d comes to rebuke Adam for having eaten from the tree, Adam blames "the woman You gave to be with me" for having offered him the fruit.1 How ungrateful! G‑d had given him a woman because He saw how much Adam suffered from being alone, and instead of appreciating the treasure he had, Adam focused on what he lacked.2

In a letter to an individual who habitually complained about life, the Rebbe wrote:

In the world in which we live, everything contains a mixture of good and evil. A person must choose which of the two aspects he wishes to emphasize, contemplate, and pursue …

How instructive is what our sages tell us about Adam's ingratitude: even before being expelled from the Garden of Eden — while literally in paradise — he complained about his reality.

On the other hand, there were Jewish men and women who thanked and blessed the Creator, reciting the morning blessings each day, while living in the most atrocious conditions of the German concentration camps. Ultimately, each individual's circumstances will fall somewhere between these two extremes.

My goal is not to rebuke you, but to highlight a reality: the kind of life we live — full of satisfaction and meaning, or the contrary — depends, to a great extent, on our willpower, which determines whether we place the emphasis on the positive or the negative.3

We are capable of complaining about conditions in paradise, just as we are capable of feeling gratitude in the most inhumane conditions of a concentration camp's hell.

One of the Rebbe's personal assistants, Rabbi Berl Junik, recounted that the Rebbe once confided in him: "I worked on myself to always see things in a positive light; without that, I could not have survived."4 Knowing the personal suffering of every kind that the Rebbe endured — in addition to the anguish of the multitudes who shared their personal situations with him — one can appreciate that achieving such a perspective is no small feat.

The tool for this week: Reflect on the following questions. Are the circumstances of your life good or bad regardless of how you look at them — or precisely because of how you look at them? Would a change of attitude be reflected in your reality?