Rabbi Akiva Rutenberg - Happiness

our students in Harvard happier or more depressed than average college students Sean archer in a book called The Happiness Advantage tells us that students in Harvard are actually considerably more depressed than students around the country talban Shahar a very influential writer about positive psychology taught a course in Harvard that had the highest attendance of any course in Harvard's history over 1300 people signed up for his course on happiness why would students be more depressed and Harvard than other colleges Sean Archer makes the following observation which I think we can learn a lot from and he says that who gets accepted to Harvard usually it's people a student who is the smartest in their class somebody who is the brightest in the highest School in their in their town or city their sense of self often comes not because of an internal driven place a place of their own work but rather because of good comparison to people around them I'm smarter than everybody else around me and then they go to Harvard and everybody else is just as smart or smarter than them and as soon as they get accepted to Harvard they're extremely excited and happy but once they're there they often can get depressed in order to try to stop this depression one of the things that Sean Archer would do when he was the the dean of one of the the student dorms is he would take a thousand random students take them a freshman into a room and he would say to them I'm going to make a prediction and they're like and he says my prediction is that 99 of people in this room will not graduate in the top one percent and it's like a dagger to their heart because they're so used to graduating in the top point zero zero one percent I think that with this we can learn a lot about why we're not happy today often as a society and where true happiness comes from one of the reasons I think we're not happy is because we we're constantly comparing ourselves to other people whether it's through social media or in many other ways when true happiness we know is found inside of ourself somebody once summarize our society today that we buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't know we are constantly putting happiness outside of ourselves when I reach that next stage in life then I'll be happy and then ironically when we get to that stage we look back before and we're like oh that was the good times and we're constantly putting it outside of ourself it's interesting in the Torah one of the Ten Commandments is not to be jealous and we know the Ten Commandments are very very important all the Torah is important but the Ten Commandments are extremely important and the last one of the Ten Commandments is not to be jealous that commandment mirrors According to some some the first commandment of having a faith in God and I saw a beautiful explanation because when a person is jealous it means that they're lacking Faith because if I had truly had faith in Hashem in giving creating me then I say as the mission says the whole world should have been created just for me with my challenges with my strengths this is who I am and I don't have to look at anyone else if I'm jealous or envious and and wishing I was somebody else or had somebody else's things I am lacking an internal sense of purpose and and meaning and ultimately this comes from a lack of faith as well if Aaron carliner says a beautiful idea on the words of the Shema we say we serve god with with all of our heart and it's plural and Rashi an explanation says why is it plural one of the explanations of Rashi is the other one is that your heart should not be in a fight with God and karliner says why does it you do use the word makum for God it's a rare name for God and he he says a beautiful explanation to serve God with all your heart means that you serve him from where you are that you're not in a fight with your place in life where if I only had somebody else's money somebody else's place if I was born in a different time if they didn't have this or if I did have this then I would be happy then I'd be able to serve Hashem from from simra on the contrary means you serve Hashem from where you are and if we can learn to appreciate our internal value and our Eternal sense of self versus comparing ourselves to others we can find a true sense of meaning and Lasting happiness wishing all of you a meaningful yamtov a holiday full of simple of joy of an internal peace and connection