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To Our Non-Orthodox Readers: The Moment Of Truth

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--- Quote from: RationalThought110 on September 12, 2007, 09:30:31 AM ---"The moment of truth. When all is placed in proper perspective, when the meaningless becomes truly meaningless, the unimportant truly unimportant, the vanity, vanity. The moment when a man seizes his destiny and shrieks - enough, enough. Done with pursuit of vanity, done with the race of material life, through with the treadmill of foolishness. The moment when a man seeks to count his gold and discovers it to be ashes, when he attempts to embrace his empire and finds it the great illusion, the moment when the values of a lifetime become foolish, sordid, unimportant things."


Could you explain what this means?

--- End quote ---

I imagine that a Baal Teshuva would know best.

I know at one point as a student,
It would be when, at one time in one`s life, one is engrossed and addicted to pleasures like television, films. But one realises  that it is all a waste of time, there are better things you can do that you are not doing, and so watching TV is of 0 or negative worth.So you have to grasp that moment of realization , and do a sort of "cognitive behavioural therapy" on yourself, you change the association of TV, with negative feelings towards it.
I suppose one could do that to bad habits like going to bed late, or lazyness, too. But it is most obvious when you are actively persuing negative things, [at the cost of something valuable] (and if you have a goal, as you should, then it would almost always be at the cost of something more valuable).

A Rabbi Kahane quote once said "Life is essentially a question of values".  Of course, he was a brilliant man, who was neither lazy nor a procrastinator ..   It is easier to break an addiction to something you actively do.  But still, it is difficult.  He was extremely addicted to baseball.  He said on a talkshow that the host has no idea how into baseball he was, but he had to give that up. It is a great life being a jew in america, but, G-d wants the Jew to live in Israel.       

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