CHOOSE YOUR OWN STRESS

At Avot 3:6 Rabbi Nechunya ben Hakanah teaches:

כָּל הַמְקַבֵּל עָלָיו עוֹל תּוֹרָה, מַעֲבִירִין מִמֶּֽנּוּ עוֹל מַלְכוּת וְעוֹל דֶּֽרֶךְ אֶֽרֶץ, וְכָל הַפּוֹרֵק מִמֶּֽנוּ עוֹל תּוֹרָה, נוֹתְנִין עָלָיו עוֹל מַלְכוּת וְעוֹל דֶּֽרֶךְ אֶֽרֶץ

One who accepts upon himself the yoke of Torah is exempted from the yoke of government duties and the yoke of worldly cares; but one who casts off the yoke of Torah is saddled with the yoke of government duties and the yoke of worldly cares.

This is a stick-and-carrot mishnah. The carrot, the inducement to lead a life of learning the Torah and fulfilling its precepts, is contrasted with the stick—the harsh reality of having to pull one’s weight in terms of accepting civic responsibilities and earning one’s own keep. So we have a question: if it is axiomatic, indeed self-evident, that it is better to learn and practise Torah than to close one’s sefarim and take one’s chance with the vicissitudes of daily life outside the beit midrash, why do we need a mishnah to tell us this?

An unusual answer to this question comes from Gila Ross (Living Beautifully). Our Tanna is not teaching us the obvious: instead, he has a powerful message that applies to every one of us today: human life is conducted in a state of stress—but we get to choose our stress.

Learning and living Torah has its upside, for sure, particularly when one is supported by others. But it is stressful too. The struggle to understand and then master complex areas of the Oral Law, the battle to internalize and live the precepts that look so simple on the printed page, the constant questioning of one’s motives, the purity of one’s thoughts and the impossibility of knowing whether one has reached the requisite spiritual level—these are all stress-inducing factors. Are they more or less stressful than the problems one faces at work or beyond? The answer depends on every individual and on every set of facts, and we can never know.

The principle of choosing one’s own stress runs way beyond this mishnah in Avot. Thus in the second perek Hillel teaches מַרְבֶּה נְכָסִים מַרְבֶּה דְאָגָה (“the more the wealth, the more the worry”, Avot 2:8). Again, and this time without any reference to choosing between Torah and secular life, we see an indication that we choose our own stress levels: too little wealth and we experience the stress of poverty—but too much wealth and it is our affluence that stresses us. The choice is ours—and our task is to be honest with ourselves when we seek out our comfort level. This is Ben Zoma’s point at Avot 4:1 where he teaches: אֵיזֶהוּ עָשִׁיר, הַשָּׂמֵֽחַ בְּחֶלְקוֹ (“Who is the person who is happy? The one who is happy with his portion”).

 If we can identify the point at which we neither strive to gain more nor feel insecure if we have less, we should have a stress-free existence. In practice, this is probably not going to be a single point but a fluctuating zone of personal comfort in which one’s stress is minimized. But if we ever find ourselves in this zone, being human, we will probably find something else on to which we will transfer our stress surplus.

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