To work too much is not correct because you have to balance the value and the quality of your existence with the purpose for which it exists. So, if you’re putting in 22 hours a day just for getting your existence comfortable, when are you going to attend to the purpose and the meaning of that existence?
We’ve got to balance our time with getting rich and knowing what to do with it. We’re spending all our time getting rich but where is it going?
A Rabbi once asked one of his congregants,
“do you have time to study?”
He said “no, I have no time to study after work, i have to make a living!”
“Why?” the Rabbi asked.
He said “I work so I can send my kid to yeshiva!”
The Rabbi smiled and said “you know, everyone I asked tells me the same thing, so who is this kid that everyone is trying to send to Yeshiva? and when that kid grows up, is he gonna come and tell me that he’s too busy to study because he has to send his kids to yeshiva?”
The Rabbi’s point was, when are we gonna get to the punchline? If everybody is working full time to make it possible to go to yeshiva, but nobody actually goes, what are we doing it all for?
We make cuts in our lives to make our existence better and try to establish ourselves comfortably so that we can live a life, but then we have no time for it because we put in 22 hours!
The question we must ask ourselves is: Where is our life? We put in a long day at work and then come home, but what is home? Is it a break from life? Is it a place where we can collapse and chill out and rest up for another day of life, or is this where our life happens?
