Rebbe Yekil Meir from Gostinin went one day on the eve of the holy week of Shavuos to visit his rebbe-mentor Menachem Mendl from Kotsk. Upon Meir's return, his father-in-law asked him:
— And what did you learn during your stay in Kotsk?
“There was Shavuos,” answered Rebbe Yekil, “and we studied the Ten Commandments.”
- What a coincidence! - the father-in-law remarked ironically. “Can you imagine, we also had Shavuos here, and we also studied the Ten Commandments.” Or maybe there are other Commandments in Kotsk, and you went so far to get to know them?
- But it’s true! - Yekil Meir exclaimed. — The Kotsk Commandments are different from those here.
- How is this? - the father-in-law asked incredulously.
— What, for example, did you learn from the commandment “Thou shalt not steal”?
“What she teaches,” the father-in-law continued to be perplexed, “do not take from another what is not yours.”
- That's the difference. In Kotsk I learned that you should not steal not only from others, but also from yourself.
Commentary by Rami Shapiro What does a person steal from himself? What he most desires. How does he steal it from himself? In a blind desire to get it. For example, you crave confidence in anything, and for this you look for Truth with a capital T. But the closer you get to it, the clearer it becomes: absolutely nothing can be sure. The very desire to get what you want is an obstacle on the way to it.
What you crave so much cannot be taken by yourself - you can only receive it. And don’t imagine that the path to it is climbing to a transcendental peak. On the contrary, you need to stand at the foot of the mountain and wait for what you want to roll down on its own. The “winner” in life is not the one who conquers the peaks, but the one who knows how to wait at the bottom.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru