Can I Control My Wandering?

Directionless. Aimlessly wandering. Traveling with no destination. It’s not fun and anyone would feel frustrated in such a situation.  It could be one of the most hopeless and self-defeating situations to be in. Unless, of course, that was your goal. There are people who intentionally go off wandering in  unknown places. Perhaps they are exploring new vistas or wanting to get away from everything and find new uncharted destinations, or to find themselves. 

The Jews leaving Egypt traveled in the desert for 40 years with 42 stops or “legs”, and if you look at the route they took, a lot of it seems to be aimless wandering. They had started out on the longer southern route toward Israel.  They could have taken a much shorter route Northward along the Mediterranean but as the Torah recounts, there was a chance they would turn around and go back as soon as they encountered war. So they headed to the desert instead, intending to traverse the south of Israel, then head north and enter from the east. Even though it was a longer route and they did complain about it, at least they had a clear destination.

Then came the story of the spies, and they were doomed to spend another 38 years wandering the desert.  At this point the journeys seem to be aimless wandering.

Yet the Torah says (in the second of this week’s double Parsha, Masei):  “These are the journeys of the Jewish people by which they left Egypt.”  The Rebbe comments on the words “by which they left Egypt,” referring to all 42 legs of the journey, noting that the very first leg got them out of Egypt. It would seemingly have been more accurate to say “These are the journeys… by which they traveled from Egypt to Canaan.”

Leaving Egypt is more than a physical journey. It is a concept, a state of being. Egypt represents limits, being enslaved on any level. Going out of Egypt means feeling ourselves to live up to our full potential. It could be overcoming fears, breaking away from habits, or even achieving a whole new spiritual level that we imagined we could never attain because of whatever limitation we perceived. “I’m not that religious” or “I’m not on that level” or “I’m not educated enough” or “what will my friends and family say” are a few that come to mind. We each have our own self-imposed limits, and we each have the ability to break away and accomplish great things beyond our wildest imagination.

If we look at the 42 journeys through the desert as a metaphor for our life’s journey, we realize that this exponential growth and breaking out of any limits is a lifetime pursuit. At each stage of our lives we have the ability to accomplish new breakthroughs, if we just recognize that whatever happens to us is not random and we don’t have to just wander aimlessly.

Here we get back to my opening paragraph.  The Jews sometimes felt like they were wandering aimlessly in the desert, but Hashem tells us that each journey was a necessary step in the progression of “leaving Egypt.”  Chassidus tells us that every step of the journey through the desert helped accomplish the goal of taming the “desert”- the darkness and impurity of the world. (There is a lot written about this concept, I am just touching the surface.)  Seen in that light, not one of the steps was aimless and not one of the journeys was useless. Every step had a purpose.

As we go through life, we sometimes find ourselves feeling lost, perhaps feeling as if we are just moving through the days without accomplishing anything. This is certainly a feeling that many have had over the last year.  Sometimes events happen that mess up our plans, and we feel as if our carefully crafted goals are upended through circumstances beyond our control. Well, this all depends on our attitude. If we realize that the events of our lives are not just random, but all part of Hashem’s plan for us to attain greatness, each on our own level, then the whole narrative changes.

Our purpose is to transform the world, to bring light into darkness and to express our true essence that is a spark of Hashem’s light that is the core of each of us.  Wherever we may be, whatever our situation, it is exactly where we need to be at that moment in order to fulfill our purpose. Maybe we planned differently, maybe we weren’t thinking we would need to wander for a while and had our journey all planned to get from point A to point B by a certain time.  We get frustrated when it doesn’t work out that way. If we realize that we don’t know what Hashem’s plan is, but that whatever happens is part of a necessary part of our personal journey, we will use every moment well, and each step will be another step toward personal redemption and spiritual freedom.