In chapter 26 the Alter Rebbe lays down the foundation, the great rule of avodas Hashem: there is no place for atzvus (sadness, depression), and a person must be in a state of simcha, joy. That is the basis of the chapter and its central point.
Of course, it is no simple thing to tell a person, "You must be joyful." He has reasons that keep him from joy, and he has to meet those reasons face to face and give each one its proper answer if he is really going to arrive at simcha. The second half of the chapter is devoted to exactly that, with detailed, practical advice. But first the Alter Rebbe takes a few lines to speak about the general failing of atzvus, and in what measure sadness can actually be something good, as we will see.
A question from the wording of a verse in Mishlei:
Until now the Alter Rebbe has rejected atzvus entirely and hung a bright warning sign over it: sadness is the agent of the nefesh habahamis (the animal soul) and of the yetzer hara, and it is what brings a person down. There is the well known saying of one of the great disciples of the Maggid: "Sadness is not a sin, but what sadness can bring a person to, not even a sin can bring him to." Atzvus is the doorway through which a person falls to the lowest depths. If so, the Alter Rebbe asks: "ומה שכתוב בכל עצב יהיה מותר (ודבר שפתיים אך למחסור)" - "But what of the verse, 'In all sadness there will be gain' (whereas mere talk of the lips leads only to loss)"?
The standard commentators on this verse in Mishlei are not discussing sadness at all. They explain it simply:
"בכל עצב יהיה מותר" - a person who labors, toils and invests effort will in the end have an advantage and a profit.
"ודבר שפתיים אך למחסור" - someone who only talks, piles up words and does nothing, will in the end find himself in want.
The Alter Rebbe, however, takes the first half of the verse at face value, the way the ear hears it: "etzev" from the word atzvus, sadness, and Shlomo HaMelech is saying that in all sadness there is "mosar," an advantage. On the face of it this flatly contradicts everything said until now, that atzvus is the opening to every fall and every evil, that this is precisely the aim of the nefesh habahamis, to topple a person through it, and that a person should look for any route of escape from it. And now comes Shlomo HaMelech, the wisest of all men, and states that in all sadness there will be gain. The wording implies that sadness carries an advantage and a virtue, meaning that without it a person would not reach that advantage at all.
The answer is hinted at in the wording of the verse itself:
Had the verse said "all sadness is gain," we would understand that every sadness contains advantage and good. But the verse says: "In all sadness there will be gain," in the future tense. The implication is that sadness is something from which profit can be extracted, by someone who knows how; and if a person does not know how to extract that profit from it, the sadness stays exactly where it is and brings him down.
In the Alter Rebbe's words: "אדרבה, משמע שהעצב מצד עצמו אין בו מעלה, רק שיגיע ויבוא ממנו איזה יתרון" - "On the contrary, the implication is that sadness in itself has no virtue; only that some advantage may come and result from it." When you tell a person "it will be good," you are saying that right now things have not yet reached the state of good; there is only potential here. And what is that advantage? "והיינו השמחה האמיתית בה' אלוקיו הבאה אחר העצב האמיתי" - "namely, the true joy in Hashem his G-d that comes after the true sadness." Out of sadness there can emerge a great and genuine joy, in which a person truly rejoices in his connection and bond with the Almighty. When? When the sadness is "true sadness," that is, sadness arising from a genuine cause.
Here the Alter Rebbe does not spell out the distinction, and it is explained at greater length elsewhere, but this is the meaning here as well: there is a vast difference between what is called "atzvus" and what is called here "the true sadness," which elsewhere in chassidus is called "merirus," bitterness. The difference between atzvus and merirus is the difference between one extreme and the other.
The parable of the king and the two generals:
A king wished to conquer a certain country, and sent his general with the troops and with every resource at his disposal. After a war and a struggle the general failed completely and came back empty handed, without having captured the place. The king wanted to establish the real reason for this: was it because victory there is simply difficult, or because the general is not capable and not talented, or because he did not want the victory at all? The king decided to send a second general, one who seemed to him more capable and more talented, and to see what would happen. The second general went out, conquered the entire territory and returned with the spoils.
Afterward the king said: now I will observe the first general's reaction, and from it I will understand the true reason for his failure. Did he fail because he wanted it to fail and did not want the king to be victorious, or did he fail while genuinely pained by it? Everything is decided by his reaction. If the king sees the first general rejoicing and dancing over the victory, that is a sign that he truly wanted to win, that when he came back in failure he was pained that the king had not been victorious, and now that the king has won he shares in the king's joy. But if the king sees him sad, and his sadness is "why did I not succeed, and why specifically did he succeed," then the general will be stripped of his rank, because all his concern is for himself alone.
The lesson:
When a Jew finds himself in a situation where he did not attain what he sought, or he stumbled in a particular sin, or he did not withstand a test, everything depends on one question: what is he pained about? Is he pained over himself, or is he pained that he is missing Elokus, that he is missing the Almighty? This is precisely the difference between atzvus and merirus:
Atzvus: the person is thinking about himself: about his loss, about his situation, about what people will say about him and what he will say about himself. His mood sinks, he despairs of himself and concludes that he is a failure, that he does not succeed and is not capable; he falls, he stops doing, and he slides downward. His mind is fixed the whole time on the past: how badly I failed, how far I fell. And since he has no way to repair the past, he sees himself as lost, and he collapses.
Merirus: the person is not thinking about himself but about the fact that he did not manage to connect to the Almighty, and that is what genuinely pains him. Therefore any opportunity he is given to renew that connection, he will run to seize. His mind is fixed on the future: can I repair this, can I lift myself up, can I renew my bond with the Almighty right now? Out of the pain itself he springs forward and breaks into a dance.
The parable spoke of two different generals, but the same thing can be said of one person who is given a second chance. When he sees that now it is in his hands to succeed, he becomes excited and says: yesterday I did not succeed, but now I will. It pains me that I did not succeed yesterday, and out of that very pain I rush forward.
It is like a businessman who draws up his balance at the end of the month and finds himself in the red. If he is a normal person, and he has means and energy, he will invest again and look for another way to do better. He does not sit and lament his fate; he works to stay afloat and to find a new way to lift his business out of the fall.
This is "true sadness": sadness that comes from something real, not sadness that comes from empty things, from self centered thoughts and all sorts of imaginings: what I did not do, how I look, what people will say about me and what I will say about myself. Those are empty things, and that is the atzvus that brings a person down, a kind of sadness one should never enter into at all. But after the kind of sadness that the Alter Rebbe calls here "the true sadness," and which elsewhere is called merirus, one goes out in a dance, in joy, and says: now I have before me a fresh opportunity to daven and to do a mitzvah, and through it I will renew the connection, and what was not yesterday will be better tomorrow. This is the true joy that comes after the true sadness, and this is what Shlomo HaMelech means when he says that from sadness "there will be gain," there will be an advantage.
In summary: in this section we learned the great rule the Alter Rebbe establishes in chapter 26: there is no place for atzvus, and there must be simcha. A question was raised from the wording of the verse "In all sadness there will be gain," and the answer is derived from the precise language of the verse: it does not say "all sadness is gain" but "there will be gain," in the future tense, teaching that sadness in itself has no virtue; it is only that an advantage can come out of it, namely the true joy in Hashem that follows true sadness. We clarified the difference between atzvus and merirus, as illustrated by the parable of the king and his two generals: atzvus is occupied with oneself and with the past, and it brings a person down, while merirus is occupied with the absence of Elokus and with the future, and out of it a person rises to renew his bond with the Almighty.
In the next section we will take up the second half of the chapter, the practical advice the Alter Rebbe offers for dealing with the things that cause a person to be sad.