The Dangers of Entitlement Mindset

1:35Why is the Rav scared? He's 94 years old. What could you possibly be scared of at this stage of your life? I'm scared that maybe I got too much kavod. I'm scared that maybe they gave me too much kavod, like they think it's me. Maybe they think that they're supposed to give me the kavod. I'm scared that they gave me the kavod and not the Torah the kavod. I'm very scared of this. And I, mamash, got very, like, he was sad about it. He's like, what do you mean, if you're not gonna give me kavod, who are you gonna give kavod to? The Torah doesn't read itself. Who reads the Torah? Do you ever see a Torah pray in a minyan? Do you ever see a Torah speak for itself? We think, what are you talking about? Who read the Torah? I read the Torah. I did it. I wrote the book. I said the shiur. Go find somebody else to give you a shiur for nine hours. No, I did all of it—me, me, me! He was scared. His driver, who had been with him for many, many years, said that he had the merit to put eye drops in the rabbi's eyes 30 minutes before he died.

2:57He was 104 years old and had problems with his eyes, suffering for years. He reached a point where before he died, he couldn't move and couldn't take care of himself. His driver put drops in his eyes, and Rav Elyashiv, zt"l (of blessed memory), told him to come closer, come closer. He whispered in his ear and... Thank you, thank you, thank you. What thank you? Eyedrops? You're the biggest rabbi in the world. What are you talking about? This, rabotai, is a person who understands you don't deserve anything. You, as a person, deserve nothing. No one owes you anything. Not a ride, not a loan, not a thing. Not even eyedrops you don't deserve. Even if you're a big rabbi, or if you're not. Needless to say, if you're not. This is the opposite of our logic. Our logic is, what do you mean? I gave her a ride, so why wouldn't she give me a ride back? I lent him some money, so why wouldn't he lend me what I need? I'm his friend, so why wouldn't he talk to me? I'm her husband, so how come she doesn't? Why doesn't she cook for me? Why doesn't she clean for me? You don't deserve anything.

4:21No one owes you anything. They should do it if they want to do chesed, they want to do a mitzvah, but owe it to you? Zero. No one owes you anything. When a person starts understanding this, they could literally eliminate almost a hundred percent of the problems in their life that they have with people. Why? Your only problem with people is because you believe they owe you something. Deep down inside, you think the world owes you something, like everybody has an IOU. He owes you a ride, he owes you a raise, he owes you a loan, he owes you time, he owes you attention. She owes you this, she owes you a meal, she owes you a kiss, she owes you a hug. Who are you, is what Torah is telling us. Who do you think you are? And we're not talking about some rasha, of course, you don’t deserve anything. No, no, we're talking about the tzadik. We're talking about Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi saying, if you're the tzadik, if you're the one that learned Torah, that fulfilled everything we said until now, and you're living off of bread and nothing and in salt, and you're barely drinking water, and you're like a little Moshe Rabbeinu in your generation, you're the greatest in the world. You still deserve nothing.

5:45A person starts to look at the world that way. First and foremost, they'll never get into an argument with anyone. Why? Because they realize no one owes them anything. So, what are you arguing about exactly? What, she didn't do this? Yes, but she doesn't owe you. What, I didn't do this? But he doesn't owe you. No one owes you anything. So, what are you arguing about? The second thing that happens is it makes you appreciate every little bit in your life. Every little thing that happens in your life automatically becomes like a lottery. Wow, thank you very much. Chazak u'Baruch. You gave me the water. Ashrecha tov lach. May Hashem bless you forever and ever, and may your kids grow up to be Kohanim Gedolim. Why did I just give you water, buddy? It's free over there from the fountain. No, you don't owe me the water. Who says you're supposed to give me water? Yes, it's kavod for chachamim. It's a mitzvah. It's good, but it's not old. When a person starts looking at the world from that set of glasses, that set of clear glasses, all of a sudden every single thing that they have in their life becomes valuable. The phone that's half broken, the car that doesn't really drive all the time, drives whenever it feels like it, and the house that's like you're not really sure if it's a house or it's a hen because your neighbor looks like a chicken and the kids in the house are not really wearing clothes anymore so they're acting like chickens sometimes and you're not really sure if the oven works or if it's really an oven or just a closet you're not really sure what's going on but you live there but it's the greatest place on earth. Why? Because no one owes you anything which means that everything you have is a present.

7:11the house that's like you're not really sure if it's a house or it's a hen because your neighbor looks like a chicken, and the kids in the house are not really wearing clothes anymore, so they're acting like chickens sometimes. You're not really sure if the oven works or if it's really an oven or just a closet. You're not really sure what's going on, but you live there, and it's the greatest place on earth. Why? Because no one owes you anything, which means that everything you have is a present. Everything is a present. Everything you have is a present, an undeserved present, which is the best type of present. Why is that the best type of present? Imagine that a couple, one of whom has a birthday, and the husband buys the wife a nice ring, bracelet, or whatever people buy each other these days and...

8:12She says, "Wow, I love it. Thank you." Yeah, but after two or three days, it's finished. After she showed it to everybody on Facebook and made sure to show everyone on Instagram, and she tweeted about it 87 times, after that, it's finished. "Okay, I got the ring. Okay, I'm gonna put it back and finish. That's it." Unless somebody asks, the excitement is over. Why? It was my birthday. Why'd you get it? It was my birthday. Okay, that's why I got it because it's my birthday, meaning he owed it to me anyway. It's not like the ring is special; not that the husband is special. It's all about the ring, showing off the ring. I'm not showing off the husband, just the ring. No, the husband is back to work to hopefully pay for the ring. He might have to get a second or third job now, maybe at UPS, to pay for the ring. So, she takes a picture of the ring. 500 times she tweets about the ring, 900 times she puts it on Instagram. The ring is special; the husband, not so much. Why? He owed it to me. It's my birthday. "Honey, you didn't get me anything for my birthday." People get divorced over this stuff. People literally get divorced because of birthday presents. "If he doesn't know what to buy me on my birthday, then he doesn't know me." Oh, Hashem, he doesn't know you. Such a person who wants to know.

9:38Think that they're old, they're old. But I, too, will owe nothing, nothing, nothing. I know this is the opposite of what we all learned our entire life. When you start thinking that way, everything becomes better. Your wife cooks for you. Even if it literally tastes terrible to you, it's like, Baruch Hashem. Let me kiss your hands, please, honey. No, no, stop it already, honey. You're all exaggerating. It's not even that good. I put too much salt. What too much salt? I love salt. It's the greatest salt in the world. Where'd you get it? From the Dead Sea? Did you really go to the Dead Sea just to make me food for tonight? You guys think I'm joking. This is the way you're supposed to be a husband. She doesn't owe you anything. She made you food. Who do you think you are that she owes you anything?

10:42She's smart. She's gonna do it. Why? Because if she wants to be a tzaddiket, she has to think about you. You want to be a tzaddik? You have to think about her. The problem with today's marriages is that everything's about themselves. He's thinking about what she owes him, and she's thinking about what he owes her. Eventually, they go to the court and settle the debt. They settle the debt right there. He owes her a lot of money. She owes him a lot of money. Everybody owes everybody money, but nobody knows who's gonna pay. Eventually, only the lawyer gets paid. Everybody thinks that they're owed something. This is a horrible, terrible, disastrous attitude that's leading to an enormous amount of divorce, suffering, and just misery in life. People think, "Oh yeah, I have money, so that's good." No, no, probably not, actually. Why? Because now you think people owe you even more, and... You have a lot of money, so that means that the balances go higher. You think that you deserve more now because you're in a certain class. Your suits are no longer the $99 suits on sale. Now, you don't even wear a suit if it's less than $1,000. No, no, you give it to the gmach (free-loan society). You give it to some people, homeless people. "Yeah, this is only $800. I don't wear stuff like that anymore. It's like, you know, when I was a kid. I don't wear that. $1,000, man, enough for me."

12:04So now you think that the world owes you even more. People show up late to work? Well, you're crazy. You're three minutes late. Are you out of your mind? Why? What? You made a big deal. Why? You think he owes you his life because you gave him a paycheck every two weeks. You gave him a paycheck every two weeks. That means that if he's late for three days, he's like a betrayer, like a Korach. Something's wrong with him? He's just late three minutes. You think he owes you everything because you gave him a paycheck. Once a person gets a paycheck and knows how to value the paycheck, then not only do they thank the boss for the opportunity, not only do they thank Hashem for having livelihood and sustenance and not having to be a beggar, but they literally do everything and anything possible to make sure that they earn a lot more. For the company, it's more than just that paycheck. Why? Because it's free. You don't deserve it. Yeah, but I worked. So what? A lot of people work. Go to Mexico, go to Guatemala, go to different places around Africa. People work. Go to China, go to different places around the world. They don't work harder than all of us put together, yet they get five dollars a month, six dollars a month.

13:29Maybe you get $90 a month so you could feed yourself and maybe a neighbor. They work harder than you. No, not skilled workers, no, no. On the contrary, they're the most skilled workers in the world. Your iPhones, your computers, all that stuff—they make it. They're much smarter than all of us. They're much more skilled and everything, but they get five dollars a day, five dollars a week, five dollars a month—nothing, zero. So you think because you live in America, therefore you deserve $1,000 a week or $10,000 a week, or whatever salary somebody decided to give you. You deserve it? You're that much better than the guy in China? No one is that much better than anybody else. There's never a situation where one should think there's such a wide variance between two people. It could never be that one person deserves five dollars, and the other deserves ten thousand. It's impossible for someone to be that much better than another person. Even in athletics, let's say you go against the best athlete, the best basketball player—let's say Michael Jordan. In my day, he was considered a good player.

14:39So even if you go against him, and you're obviously not running back and forth, but let's say just shooting the ball, it can never be that he's gonna get 10,000 shots for every five shots you get. It's not possible to be that much different. Yes, he'll definitely be better than all of us, but it won't be to that extent. It may be that he'll get 100 shots, and you get 25, 30, or 40. Let me be better than you, like double, possibly even triple, assuming you're really bad, and he's really good, but it'll never be a factor of a thousand times more, or even a hundred times more. No one is better than anybody in anything to that extent. So you can't justify that you're getting more money because you're that much better than everybody else; you're not. Hashem decided you're gonna get it, but you forgot and you forgot Hashem decided. You think it's because of your own skill, and that's a mistake, a very, very big mistake.