This is the month of simcha. One of the biggest questions faced by mankind is HOW TO BE HAPPY? What causes happiness?
So here is what MOST people do. They create ARTIFICIAL forms of simcha. They watch people PRETENDING to be something they are not [i.e. actors] and derive joy from funny scripts that were made up by people to help others forget their true reality and enter a contrived, false reality.
OR - They decide that they will be happy if a certain teams scores more points than a different team in a game somebody made up not so long ago. They are SOOOOO happy when "their" team wins. The question is [as the psauk states] לשמחה מה זו עושה? What on EARTH are you happy about? What happened? Guys wearing that uniform scored more points than the people wearing the other uniform. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! How would the wisest of all men put it? הבל הבלים.
Or they are happy because they graduated college. Why is he or she happy? Because she decided that graduating is an important value and feels happy because they tell themselves that this value has been accomplished. But objectively - one doesn't have to be happy in such an instance. OBJECTIVELY. It is all subjective. I wouldn't be happy if I graduated college because for me, getting a degree is not a value I strive to achieve. Not that there is anything WRONG with graduating. Just that the feeling of joy is really only because people are convinced that this is a reason to be happy. But is it inherently so??
I don't believe so..... If it were objective then I would be happy if I graduated - wouldn't I? We can contrast that with PLEASURE. Pleasure is real [on a sensory level] and not something I made up. That is why we CAN'T HELP but enjoy tasty food or other earthly pleasures.
We want to be TRULY happy, not for reasons that we made up. OBJECTIVE happiness.
Think about what that means.
Bi-ahava rabba....
