At Avot 4:1 Ben Zoma teaches (among other things):
אֵיזֶהוּ
עָשִׁיר, הַשָּׂמֵֽחַ בְּחֶלְקוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: יְגִֽיעַ כַּפֶּֽיךָ כִּי תֹאכֵל,
אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ וְטוֹב לָךְ, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה, וְטוֹב לָךְ לָעוֹלָם
הַבָּא
Who is rich? One who is happy with his lot. As it states (Tehillim 128:2):
"If you eat of the effort of your hands, you are fortunate and it is good
is to you"; “you are fortunate" in this world, "and it is good for
you" in the World to Come.
The party line is eloquently expressed by Rabbi Yisrael
Miller (The Wisdom of Avot) where he writes, citing Rav Yerucham
Levovitz:
… [W]e can all find happiness and
success inside ourselves, and need not—and should not—allow our happiness to
depend on external factors or circumstances; and with this understanding, “thank
Hashem, I am happy always”.
A baraita in the sixth and final perek emphasizes this
notion with specific reference to the Torah scholar and citing the same verse
in Tehillim. At Avot 6:4 we learn:
כַּךְ הִיא
דַּרְכָּהּ שֶׁל תּוֹרָה: פַּת בְּמֶֽלַח תֹּאכֵל, וּמַֽיִם בִּמְשׂוּרָה
תִּשְׁתֶּה, וְעַל הָאָֽרֶץ תִּישָׁן, וְחַיֵּי צַֽעַר תִּחְיֶה, וּבַתּוֹרָה
אַתָּה עָמֵל, אִם אַתָּה עֽוֹשֶׂה כֵּן, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ וְטוֹב לָךְ, אַשְׁרֶֽיךָ
בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה, וְטוֹב לָךְ לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא
Such is the way of Torah: Bread
with salt you shall eat; water in moderation you shall drink, and upon the
ground you shall sleep. Live a life of deprivation and toil in Torah. If so you
do, "If you eat of the effort of your
hands, you are fortunate and it is good is to you"; “you are fortunate"
in this world, "and it is good for you" in the World to Come.
It is possible to employ an objective test in order to
establish that a person is fortunate. However, prima facie it seems both
unnecessary and wrong to tell a person that they are happy or to prescribe in
blanket terms that they will be happy. Happiness is experienced by every
individual in a unique manner and to a unique degree.
One can go further in questioning the utility of the
teachings in Avot concerning happiness, since there are a number of unstated
assumptions that underpin the notion of true happiness being the feeling of being
happy with one’s lot. For example:
If I want something that I do not have, I am discontented.
If I want something and God does not provide for me to
obtain it, I am criticizing God’s assessment of what I am entitled to have and
therefore implicitly consider Him unfair.
My being happy is a conscious choice, an exercise of my free
will.
My lot consists of what I have or can access for myself, and
not what I should have or need to have—but do not.
These assumptions, like the notion that one should be happy
with one’s lot, are important because they play out in a person’s behaviour and
response to factors that go beyond personal contentment. They therefore affect middot,
norms of behaviour, and are not absolutes. This means that, while we can
cheerfully endorse the idea that it is good to be content with one’s lot, we
can drill it full of exceptions. Thus we can recite all 13 of the bakashot,
the requests that form the heart of the weekday tefillah, without fear. We can seek
to make provision for the needs of our family and, to a lesser extent, our
wider community even if, in doing so, we make demands for things that we do not
want.
Rabbinical thought does not challenge these teachings of
Avot, but it does examine them in a variety of ways that make them less
sententious and more appealing. Thus, for example, the Ben Ish Chai (cited in Mima’ayanot
Netzach) explains that the “lot” (chelek in Hebrew) with which a person
is happy is the chelek of his assets that he allocates to the benefit of
the poor. He can rejoice in the fact that, by giving away this portion, he
increases his own portion in the world to come.
I would like to suggest that there is a practical use for
the concept of being happy with one’s lot.
In our lives we inevitably find there are things we don’t
have but would wish to acquire, as well as, less often, things we do have but
which we neither need nor want. Why not
use the criterion of happiness with one’s lot as a sort of yardstick by which
to measure our position regarding what we do and don’t want. When contemplating whether to acquire or
indeed pray for something, we should ask: “can I honestly say that it will make
me happier?” Likewise, when retaining or
hoarding something, or dealing with another person’s requests that are made of
us, we should ask: “can I honestly say that the loss of this article or acceding
to this request will make me less happy?” This mental audit of our wish lists
may not bring us to a state of permanently radiant happiness, but it will force
us to confront the question of how much our happiness means to us in material,
social, emotional and intellectual terms.
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