Sometimes the road to simcha (Jewish happiness) is a “Rocky” one:

Writing this blog is great and I’m learning new things every day and improving, but I don’t want to act like I’m always happy, or that I have all the answers.

I get knocked down all the time. I recently wrote about trying to get my disordered eating under control. And I was succeeding…for a while. And then I started binging again. The same thing with exercise, unfortunately. I try to love this process of seeking simcha and writing about it, but sometimes I get discouraged by how few people I seem to be reaching.

The good news is that trying to be happier doesn’t have to be a straight ascension. There are peaks and valleys, and that’s OK. The way to reach those peaks is to keep persevering and never give up, no matter how difficult things may seem.

But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward…That’s how winning is done!!!       –Rocky Balboa

Rabbi Lazer Gurkow, the spiritual leader of Beth Tefilah congregation in London, Ontario, recently wrote in The Jerusalem Post about how with determination, we  can “fortify our spirit”:

Throwing in the towel (there are lots of boxing metaphors in today’s post! – Simcha) is a form of failure. No matter how short our spirit and heavy our workload, we must put shoulder to mast and heave. We must work it daily and hourly until we succeed. We don’t need to become the best. Just a little better.

And in the excellent book Life in the Balance, which offers Torah perspectives on positive psychology, Rabbi Raphael Pelcovitz and Dr. David Pelcovitz stress the importance of persistence. They quote the Malbim, an influential Rabbi from the 1800s, who commented on the verse in The Book of Job that reads, “For man is born to toil.”

Man was created to work hard with his own hands. When wealth is inherited without hard work, ultimately it will be lost by the next generation. At the end of the day, the essence of a man’s success depends on his persistence and hard work. – Page 205 of Life in the Balance.

What is true about monetary wealth is also true about spiritual wealth. It’s sometimes hard to be happy. We vow to lose weight, but we quickly go off the diet. We say we’ll learn more Torah, but Facebook and Twitter call to us. We try to be more patient with our kids, but we are just so tired, stressed and cranky. It’s hard.

But don’t ever forget what we Jews say after every Shabbat, during the Havdala ceremony:

For the Jews there was light, gladness, joy and honor – so may it be for us!

We can do it. We’ll get there some day, as long as we keep trying…

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