Nachman, the Traveling Salesman
Rebbe Nachman testified about himself that had he not served Hashem with patience, he wouldn’t have become anything more than “Nachman the travelling salesman.”
Patience is a virtue. How many times were you told that growing up? Perhaps what was even more annoying is that they were always right. Always. The times when I stopped, held myself back from ‘doing’ and trying to force the issue, and had patience, it always but always worked out for the best.
The trouble is that there haven’t been so many times like that. Usually, I’d have patience for approximately five minutes, then be overwhelmed by impatience and frustration and go straight into ‘make it happen’ mode.
When this happened, I could quit my job on a whim; move country at the snap of a finger; yell at people / manipulate people; find endless new strategies to ‘make it happen’ and drive myself and everyone around me bonkers until ‘something’ changed.
That was in chutz l’aretz, outside of Israel. But things don’t work that way here in Eretz Yisrael. Here, where Hashem’s complete and utter mastery of every facet of your life is so much easier to discern, patience isn’t so much a necessity, as the only way to get through life happily, in one piece.
Hashem has taught me again and again that if I try and force the issue (any issue…), I’m not going to solve the root of the problem; it’s simply going to pop up in some other area of my life, and I’ll have to go through the whole rigmarole from scratch over and over and over again. Unless and until I finally learn p-a-t-i-e-n-c-e.
So it is that I sit and wait patiently to have more kids. I sit and wait patiently for the long Summer holidays to be over. I sit and wait patiently for Mashiach. I sit and wait patiently for Hashem to show me what He wants me to do with my life (other than sitting and waiting patiently.) And most days, I’m really rather good at it. Most days, I know that people have ‘jobs’ and ‘careers’ and ‘outside interests’ and ‘shopping sprees’ in an attempt to cover up the enormous emptiness in the middle of themselves where a thriving relationship with Hashem should be.
I get that, I really do. But every now and then, I have a day where the familiar nagging voice comes back to me: ‘Nu? Is this all you have to show for yourself? Making cheese toasties all day and doing three loads of laundry?’ (It’s worse when I haven’t even done three loads of laundry, of course.)
I had a day like that yesterday. I woke up late, and I didn’t manage to do my hour of hitbodedut at pretty much the only time available when the kids are home and it’s too hot to be out most of the day. That hour is my saving grace, my guardian angel. Even when my hitbodedut is actually quite rubbish, I still get a sufficient spiritual charge out of least trying to maintain my connection to my Creator. But yesterday, it just wasn’t going to happen, and my yetzer hara spotted its chance, and pounced.
“You’re pathetic,” it announced. “You used to have a great career and run your own business, and now, you can’t even get a job as a checkout girl.” Whoah, where did that come from? I tried to shake it off, but it followed me round the house, picking holes in everything.
“Look at all the dishes in the sink! Look at all the mess on the floor! When’s the last time you cooked something decent for your kids to eat? Why are you kidding yourself that you can do the ‘stay at home mum’ thing; you’re completely rubbish at it! You still have a load of washing from yesterday you haven’t hung up yet, and it’s not like you have anything else to do…”
On and on it went. And by the time it was finished, it had got me thoroughly miserable. “Hashem! What do you want from me? What do you want me to do with my life? My yetzer hara is right, I’m rubbish at all this housewife stuff, but you don’t seem to be sending me any other doors to open at the moment.” In fact, the complete opposite; every time I try to ‘make something happen’ on the job front, I have the clear message from upstairs that all Hashem wants me to do is to sit and wait patiently for Him to show me what He wants from me.
But this enforced inactivity is not at all easy to deal with, even though I understand it’s for my best. Most days, it’s fine, but yesterday, it wasn’t, and I started to feel quite worthless again.
My husband came home, and patiently explained, for the 100th time, how there is a difference between ‘secular’ notions of worth (career, status, possessions, external accomplishments) and the Torah’s definition of worth.
I realized two things: one, he was right. Two, (and this actually really surprised me) – I still have an ego! I still have a part of me that is trying to assert itself and ‘make things happen’, even if that’s not in Hashem’s plan for me right now.
Then I realized something else; what I’m experiencing right now is not a new thing. So many people have been through something similar, where Hashem 
asks them to hold on, to trust Him, and to have the patience to wait for everything to start to fall into place – but only when He’s good and ready.
asks them to hold on, to trust Him, and to have the patience to wait for everything to start to fall into place – but only when He’s good and ready.I remembered something I’d read about Rabbi Nachman himself, who reached such amazing spiritual heights in his brief span of 38 years. Even Rabbi Nachman experienced these times of despondency, when he was waiting for Hashem to show him what came next.
Rabbi Nachman told his disciple Rav Natan, that if he hadn’t held on, had emuna and had patience, he could have ended up as a traveling salesman. That simply boggles my mind: what a mess my life would be if instead of ‘Rabbi Nachman, Doctor of the Soul,’ we’d have had ‘Nachman, the traveling salesman.’
Who would have taught me emuna? Who would have taught me how to talk to G-d? Or how to (try to) be happy with my lot?
Even Rabbi Nachman needed a great deal of patience to achieve the amazing insights and spiritual awareness and light that he ultimately did.
Once I realized that, I started to feel a bit better. It could be that I’ll never be more than ‘Rivka, maker of cheese toasties’. But if I could at least get to the point of being ‘Rivka, the patient, happy maker of cheese toasties’, that would be good enough.
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