Yosef was born into a family of
shepherds. Life was simple and
straightforward. In the morning, you
arose, got dressed, gathered the sheep, and took them out to graze. At the end of the day, you brought them home,
sheered a few sheep, sold their wool, settled down to a nice family meal, and
retired for the night. The next day, you
arose, got dressed, gathered the sheep, and took them out to graze. Pretty much the same routine, day-in,
day-out.
But Yosef was a dreamer. He dreamed of developing the land, bundling
sheaves of wheat for mass-production.
But wait, why must it end there?
In his next dream, he was reaching for the stars. He had become so powerful that the entire
universe appeared to be bowing down to him, including his parents and older
siblings.
‘That was a strange dream. Do you think it actually means that one day
I’ll rule the world?’ he asked his brothers.
Understandably, they were far from
pleased with his intimations. And their hostility
towards him grew stronger with each passing day. At one point, their father, Yaakov, had to
step in to cool things down, chastising Yosef for his implausible visions. Deep down, however, Yaakov knew that one day
Yosef’s dreams would become a reality.
One day, when their feelings of
enmity got the better of them, they took him captive and sold him as a
slave. He ended up in Egypt where he
laboured under terrible conditions, eventually ending up in prison. By that stage, Yosef had probably lost hope
of all his earlier dreams of greatness.
Life hadn’t really turned out quite the way he’d envisioned.
And then, almost without warning,
Pharaoh pardons him and offers him the position of viceroy. Just a day prior, he had been a slave in the
dungeon of Egypt, with no hope of achieving anything in life. And now, he was the most powerful individual
in the world, responsible for coordinating the national economy and agriculture
for the years ahead. And sure enough,
just as he had dreamed twenty-two years earlier, the day arrives when his
father, step-mother, and brothers appear, prostrating themselves before him and
beseeching him for sustenance for themselves and their hungry families.
אָמַר רַבִּי לֵוִי:
לְעוֹלָם יְצַפֶּה אָדָם לַחֲלוֹם טוֹב עַד עֶשְׂרִים וּשְׁתַּיִם שָׁנָה.
מְנָלַן? — מִיּוֹסֵף, דִּכְתִיב: ״אֵלֶּה תֹּלְדוֹת יַעֲקֹב יוֹסֵף בֶּן שְׁבַע
עֶשְׂרֵה שָׁנָה וְגוֹ׳״, וּכְתִיב: ״וְיוֹסֵף בֶּן שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה בְּעׇמְדוֹ
לִפְנֵי פַּרְעֹה וְגוֹ׳״. מִן שַׁבְסְרֵי עַד תְּלָתִין כַּמָּה הָוֵי? — תְּלָת
סְרֵי, וְשַׁב דְּשִׂבְעָא וְתַרְתֵּי דְּכַפְנָא — הָא עֶשְׂרִים וּשְׁתַּיִם
Rabbi Levi said: One should
always await the fulfilment of a good dream up to twenty-two years. From where
do we know this? From Yosef, as it is written, “These are the generations of Yaakov.
Yosef was seventeen years old . . .” And
it is written, “And Yosef was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh . .
.” From seventeen to thirty how many
years are there? Thirteen. Plus the
seven years of plenty and two of famine; the total is twenty-two.
We all have huge dreams. Some of us have dreams of making a fortune. Others have dreams of becoming famous. Some have dreams of mastering the entire
Talmud. And others have dreams of leading
community institutions.
All of these aspirations come from
the soul. King Solomon writes in
Proverbs, “The soul of a man is God’s candle.”
Think about how the flame on a candle is constantly striving to rise
higher. If it could, it would soar to
the heavens, but it is held back by the wick, to which it is attached. The same way, the soul is constantly striving
to rise higher. It is held back,
however, by the constraints of the body and this physical world.
Nevertheless, the soul’s yearning
to climb higher manifests itself in the feeling of human ambition. We all want more out of life and are not content
with our current station. If not for the
yearnings of the soul, life would be quite dull, as we would never make an
effort to strive for greatness. That
greatness and accomplishment can have various expressions: physical, spiritual,
material, academic, status-related. The
choice of how to fulfil the yearnings of the soul to strive ever higher is up
to each individual to make.
What’s the average timeline as far
as expectations of dream fulfilment is concerned? About a week.
Maybe a month. Very patient
people might be willing to give it a year.
In the twenty-first century, that’s the kind of society we live in. A generation with expectations of
instantaneous gratification. We have
teenagers that are able to see their dreams of fame and fortune fulfilled
overnight via social media. If they can
do it, why can’t I?
Rabbi Levi teaches us that overnight
success is rare. We must all dream. But most dreams take time to come to
fruition. Yosef had dreams of greatness. He knew that he would become the leader of
his family and a figure of international prominence. He was so convinced of the reality of his
dreams that he had no qualms wandering around and telling people about
them. So you can imagine how he must
have felt sitting in that pit, listening to his brothers haggle over the price
they would take for him as a slave. Or
with each bathroom he cleaned in Potiphar’s house. Or during the many years he languished in
prison. And then, twenty-two years after
he first began to have visions of greatness, his dreams materialized. Everything he had imagined, and so much more,
was unfolding before his very eyes!
For a generation bred on
instantaneous gratification, twenty-two years sounds like a lifetime. We want success, and we want it now. But overnight success is rarely a good thing
in life. If you achieve all your dreams
by the time you turn eighteen, what more is there to strive for? What more is there to live for? And that’s why, tragically we see many young
celebrities who end up destroying their beautiful lives.
And then there are other people who
never achieve their dreams. They spend
their lives chasing and wishing. And
ultimately feeling empty and unfulfilled because they never saw their dreams
come to fruition. They reach the end of
their lives feeling sorry for themselves, unable to figure out what went
wrong. Here’s what went wrong: they were
so busy seeking instantaneous gratification and convincing themselves that they
could achieve overnight success, that they never constructed a reasonable plan
to arrive at the place of their dreams.
Achieving your dream life is a
two-step process. Step one is to dream
big. Picture where you’d like to be in
life. Step two is to build a strategy to
get there. Rabbi Levi suggests that your
long-term plan be anywhere up to twenty-two years.
Where do you see yourself in
twenty-two years’ time? Do you have the
patience to wait that long for your dreams to come to fruition? And if you don’t, what’s a reasonable
timeframe? Ten years? And if your dreams are indeed fulfilled within a decade,
what happens next? Do you have bigger
dreams? If you do, then why not dream
those big dreams now? What’s the time
horizon on those big dreams?
Once you’ve established your
ultimate dream life, you need to figure out the plan to get there. The key is to work backwards. If you know where you want to be in twenty-two
years’ time, where do you need to be in fifteen years’ time to be on track? How about in ten years, five years, two
years?
That’s not an easy process. Not all of us have the staying power of Yosef
and the discipline to endure the pain and suffering while we wait for the big
break. And sometimes, the curveballs
thrown at us can feel like our strategy to achieve our dreams has been
derailed. That’s how Yosef must have
felt when he was sitting in jail, thinking it was all over.
The other reason it’s not easy is
that very few people have the patience to delay their gratification for
twenty-two years. The solution is to
have small dreams and big dreams. Once
you know your long-term dreams for your life and how you plan to get there, you
can start to think about and plan for your shorter-term dreams. Given where you see yourself in twenty-two
years’ time, how would you like to see your life look in ten years’, five
years’ and two years’ time?
Life expectancy is getting longer
and longer, thank G-d. You need dreams
and a plan that will keep you feeling content and fulfilled for a very long
time. May Hashem fulfil your every dream
and help you maintain patience and resilience along the way!
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