Getting to Know Your Simcha - 006 Happiness of Past, Present And Future

Summary - Happiness In The Past, Present And Future

Being In The Present

Before (in Chapter Sixteen) we said that Purim is a day in which there is no time – it is a day in which all of the past, present and future is contained in one day. What is meant by this?

There are many people who always wonder, “What I am supposed do today?” When people do this, they are really mixing the tomorrow with today. They don’t know what to do “today” since they are busy thinking about tomorrow.

Such a life is a life spent in imagination. When people act like this, they are always living “tomorrow” today, and they never experience today. People who only live for the future and not for today never live the present moment. They don’t live in the present – they live in the morrow.

Therefore, usually we have to live in the present moment and never think about the past or future.

Yom Tov and Purim – The Past and Future In The Present

The Avodah of Purim is to reveal the future in the present. This means that a person has to actually live the future redemption even in the present.

Yom Tov, however is “zecher l’yetzias mitzrayim.” On Yom Tov, one must see the past in the present – Yom Tov is about remembering the past.

But Purim is the opposite. On Purim, we live the future in the present moment.

Purim is how we clarify our happiness – when we realize how the future is contained in the present.