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Find Your Own Way to Serve Hashem

Find Your Own Way to Serve Hashem

  From “Torah Wellsprings” by Rav Elimelech Biderman, shlita

   A famous mashal tells us that an ox stood on a mountaintop and watched the birds flying. He wanted to be like the graceful birds, so he took a leap, but to his disappointment, he did not start to fly. 

     The nimshal is that we must remember to only strive to complete the missions that Hashem meant for us. 

      For instance, once there was a bear who was not particularly good at finding enough food for himself in the forest. So, he decided to get a job at a zoo, which always has food for the animals. 

      When the bear approached the zookeeper about a job, the zookeeper told the bear that the zoo had enough bears, but the eldest monkey had recently died.

       "If you want, you can fill the monkey position," said the zookeeper. 

       But the bear was confused. He asked, "How can I work as a monkey? Everyone will immediately see that I'm a bear." 

       "That's not a problem," the zoo manager told him. "We have a zoo school that will teach you how to climb trees and do everything that a monkey does." 

       The bear agreed, thinking, as we say, "What doesn't one do for parnassah?"

      As he was large and heavy, the bear had some difficulty at first, learning how to swing on the trees, but after weeks of practice, the bear mastered his skills to the point that he could do everything just as an oversized monkey would. 

    On the first day the bear was sent to the monkey cage, he worked hard all day long, going against his nature: climbing, using tools, and swinging nimbly from trees.

     When the zookeepers came around to throw a few bananas in the monkeys’ cage, the bear was still hungry, so the bear left his cage to see whether he could find something more to eat. The bear happened upon the bear cage, and, with relief, he let himself in.

      Happy to be with his own kind, he noticed one bear who wasn’t eating much, so he asked, "Why aren't you eating this good food?" 

      The animal replied, "I was born a monkey, so just a little bit of food is enough for me. I didn't find parnassah in the forest, so I asked the zoo manager whether I could work in the zoo as a monkey.

       “But the manager told me that although the zoo has enough monkeys, but one of the older bears had just died, and they needed a replacement.

        “I told the manager that I don't know how to be a bear, but he assured me that I could learn how to be a bear at the zoo’s school. I tried to learn everything I need to know to be a bear, but it isn't easy being a bear.

        "I would much more prefer being my old monkey self."

        Overjoyed, the bear replied, "I am a bear, pretending to be a monkey, and you are a monkey, pretending to be a bear. So, let's go tell our boss that we can change places, and I can live in the bear cage, and you can work in the monkey cage." 

     But when the bear and the monkey approached the zookeeper, he replied, "You can't do that here. You were hired to be a bear, and you were hired to be a monkey, and you can't change your positions in the middle of your contracts." 

    The animals told him, "You actually speak like a donkey," which the zookeeper sadly admitted he was before he also went to the zoo school to learn how to be a zookeeper, which was needed at the time.

    Similarly, we shouldn’t fight our individual natures. We have to find the jobs that suit the skills and talents Hashem gave us. When we try to live the lives of others, we can never really succeed. Each person should serve Hashem according to the way that Hashem created him or her.

     Certain that others know how to serve Hashem better or earn parnassah better than they do, sometimes people want to copy others. People often think that they will find treasures elsewhere. But Yidden carry their treasures in their own pockets. All we have to do is discover those treasures, and then work to master them.


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