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Chodesh Tov! We just entered the month of Adar II, the month about which our Sages say: “When the month of Adar begins, we increase in joy!”. That sounds very nice, but how can we command people to be happier? My Aunt Sara had the answer to that question.
My great-great aunt Sara was a young girl when she left Russia and arrived to Israel. Her father was deceased, and she was the oldest of 4 children. She had to work hard to help her mother make ends meet. After school hours, instead of playing and doing other activities like her friends, she went to clean houses, she worked in fields and did whatever she could to support the family. Every afternoon, she would also work in their small garden in front of their shack to grow some fruits and vegetables that she would later sell in the marketplace.
You could assume that leading such a difficult life with responsibilities over her age, while adjusting to a new country and language, would have turned her into a bitter person.
Not at all!! She was always cheerful and singing, cheering up her mother and siblings.
Once, one of the wealthy men of the village, which owned a nice large house where Sara would sometimes do some cleaning work, passed in front of their garden. There, in dirty clothes, Sara was working in the mud, caring for the plants while singing.
Surprised, he stopped to ask her how she can be so joyful in such circumstances, when he himself, who had a nice house and job, was finding it difficult to feel happiness.
She answered to him simply: "It is not a big trick to sing in a nice and fancy house. The trick is to be able to sing in the mud!".
What Sara was saying is that being joyful is not a consequence of our life circumstances. We are not happy because we are wealthy, or healthy, or married, or successful... We are not happy because we live in a big house and have a nice job... We are happy because we choose to be: Happiness is a state of mind, not the product of outside situations.
Happiness is a choice: the choice to see the good side of everything, the choice to make the best out of what life throws at us and mostly, the choice to believe that everything, the good as well as the not revealed good, is sent to us by G-d.
When we remember that Someone else is in charge, and that He wants our best, we can sing even in the mud.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy month of Adar!
Rabbi Mendel and Nehama Hendel