One day, I woke up. Ok fine, it wasn’t actually “one day,” and truth be told, I’m still waking up. It was a series of days—one day, then another, and another. Slowly, amidst my journey of learning Torah, connecting to tefillah, creating close friendships with chaverim, asking genuine questions to my Rebbeim, and digging deeper into the holy works of our great Tzadikim, I began to wake up. I started to realize that the way in which I viewed the world was totally inconsistent with reality. I began to understand that I didn’t understand, which, for me, was the beginning of my newfound appreciation for the immense beauty, light, and goodness of our world.
You see, I used to think that the world was primarily dark; a place of impurity and negativity, albeit with some elements of light and goodness sprinkled throughout. I figured that our job, as Yidden, was to pay attention and focus on the good parts of the otherwise dominantly bad world. I understood the concept of “hakaras hatov” as merely a spiritually-inclined mindful exercise for finding those bits of goodness that exist somewhere beside the vast darkness.
But olam hafuch ra’isi. I was seeing the world upside down, from a misguided perspective. I became awake to a truth that was so different from how I previously perceived the world. A truth that, for me, was so incredibly refreshing, inspiring, and reJEWvinating.
I heard a powerful story about the infamous self-proclaimed atheist in the town of Berditchev who once explained to the holy Reb Levi Yitzchak why he doesn’t believe in G-d, a cruel and uncaring being. The great Chassidic Master turned to him and said, “You know, the G-d you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in him either.”
Was I seeing my G-d in the same way that Avraham, Yitzchok, and Yaakov saw Him?
So here it is, the truth: G-d is good. He is a meitiv, a constant doer and provider of goodness.
He is kulo tov. The world that we live in — the world that Hashem created — doesn’t merely contain good; it is good. Kol d’avid Rachmana l’tav avid. Kol doesn’t mean something — it means everything. Everything that G-d does is good. Period. Comma. Exclamation mark. And yes, even a question mark. Everything — what we see and what we don’t, what we understand and what we don’t, what we like and what we don’t — is good. Rabbi Akiva said it quite openly (see Berachos 60b): Kol ma she’oseh Hakadosh Baruch Hu, hakol l’tova — Whatever the Holy One, Blessed is He, does is all for the good!
Of course, to us, from our limited humanistic vantage point, matters and occurrences may appear bad, but from a higher perspective — from Hashem’s vantage point — there is only good. The Yismach Moshe points out that there’s not good and bad; rather, there’s revealed good and concealed good. But the bottom line is: everything is good!
The holy Rebbe Reb Zusha of Anipoli lived — at least externally — a life of great pain and hardship. Yet, incredibly, when they asked him, “How did you cope with such difficulty?” he responded: “ מעולם לא היה לי רע והכל לטובה — Everything was pure goodness, I never experienced anything bad in my life!”
A particular teaching that blew me away is a lesson from Rebbe Nachman (Likutei Moharan 65), where he explains that כי התכלית הוא כלו טוב — Hashem’s intention is only good. He says: ובאמת אין שום רע בעולם רק כלו טוב — truthfully, there is no such thing as bad in the world; there is only good. The Rebbe then goes on to reveal an absolutely mind-boggling idea, showing the spiritual meaning behind a well-known physiological phenomenon. That is, when a person suffers an injury, a loss, or some form of severe pain, chas v’shalom, the instinctive human response is for one to close his eyes, shutting them quickly and tightly. This is because when our eyes are open, our vision becomes blurred, distracted and limited by the physical objects in our peripherals. However, when we close our eyes, our line of sight knows no bounds and extends all the way to the tachlis hatov, and then we can see how everything truly is good. Of course, consciously, the person may be in a great deal of pain and discomfort, but the instinctive human reaction of closing the eyes upon the experience of the discomfort is a result of the soul connecting to and seeing this deep, deep truth: how everything is takka good!
It emerges, then, that the concept of hakaras hatov is not simply a moral-based religious practice for us to work on finding the good that exists in our lives; rather, it goes so much deeper: Hakaras hatov, at its core, is a deep-seated recognition and understanding that everything in our lives…is good. It’s not about trying to find the good that exists alongside the abundance of bad. It’s not about seeking the small points of light that are present within the vastness of darkness. No, not at all. That’s a misguided perspective. Instead, hakaras hatov is about seeing and recognizing the world for what it really is, which ironically happens when we close our eyes! Hakaras hatov is about seeing the tachlis hatov, appreciating the fact that hakol letova—everything is good!
For me, this reframing of our world is crucial in navigating our experience of this world. The natural ability for us to close our eyes affords us with an immense opportunity and privilege of reawakening to a deeper, greater truth—seeing Hashem and His world as good. From this perspective, challenging moments will certainly still be challenging, but they can at least be understood in a larger context, in a higher framework of the tachlis hatov. Moments of rejection can turn into a reawakened awareness of a greater truth: I am not being rejected, I am being redirected.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 58.
