In his weekly talk, Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto touched on one of the common problems today: depression. He referred to the fact that there are rich people who have everything they could possibly want, but despite that they suffer depression in their day to day life.
"The Holy One, blessed be He, gave each person tools to break through all their problems," Rabbi Pinto explained, "Some people are caught up in imagining things that are not real. They live in a bubble and illusions. They need to get out of the bubble and live real life."
He said: "We know people to whom God has given great wealth and abundance, but they are sunk in thoughts of sorrow and grief and heartache and they cry all day out of heartbreak. Why? Because they don't know how to live real life.”
He elucidated, "They live in narratives that were stuck in their minds many years before. They are still living in the memories from the time when they didn’t have money to pay their electric bill, and they don’t know how to contextualize their feelings of sadness. They actively look for reasons to be sad. They get up in the morning and complain about the whole world, which effectively creates problems for themselves.”
"The way out," Rabbi Pinto explained, "is to cleave to the Holy Torah - not only to observe mitzvot and and make a √ every time one does one - but to let the Torah seep into ourselves, to change our lives for the better. Because it is the Torah that gives us real mental and physical freedom.”
This article was written in cooperation with Shuva Israel