For Men: Creating Simcha in Marriage — Waking Up Better

by Rabbi Benzion Greiper 

Someone asked Rav Miller a question in a Thursday night lecture: How do I find the right “party”? The Rav replied that if he knew that, he’d be a millionaire. Yet the Rav continued and said, “You have to be the right party.”

To be the right party is urgent. The first step is to feel good about ourselves and connected to ourselves. It's all up to us. Most of the time a person walks into his house agitated over who knows what, and a little touch will set him off. But if he walks in, like Rav Miller said, as if he won a million dollar lottery a minute before, bills paid and everything, when he walks in and his wife says something, he gives her a hug.

So much of a relationship with anybody else is totally up to us. And after a while, we learn how to deal with the irritations that inevitably come up.

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So how do we begin with us? The first thing we have to get into our head is the Borei Olom, The Boss. A person has to wake up in the morning, and start a program, as Rav Miller said, of thinking. 

Someone asked during a Thursday night lecture, is there such a thing as too much thinking. I thought the answer would be yes, but Rabbi Miller said, “No, if you think of Chovos Halevovos, you're thinking positive, constructive thoughts -- the best.”

First of all, you've got to practice waking up properly. Ask yourself, “Was I happy this morning when I woke up? How can I wake up better?” Wake up in the morning with a deep breath, and you think the abundance of Hashem.

Ask yourself, “Was I happy this morning when I woke up? How can I wake up better?” 

A person who starts thinking as soon as he wakes up in the morning about his eyes will have a different kind of day. The best cameras in the world cannot see in tri-dimensional, while we see in quadruple, a hundred dimensions. The eyes are incredible. The ears have hair, they're clean and you can hear with them, and have the lobes. Everything's working.

But to think about it, go into detail with the eyes, and the ears, and the mouth and the breathing and the feeling brings us closer to Hashem. Imagine today you were walking, and you saw someone who could hardly walk, or who had no legs, and he could have legs like yours. Wouldn't he go into ecstasy? If you think about your legs and your toes, there would be no end to your amazement. There are more than thirty bones in the toes and feet alone!  

From the body parts to nature, the air is not the same air as yesterday, it keeps moving, yet it retains the exactly right amount of oxygen and nitrogen at every moment. A miracle!

The animals and how they exist, a tree that produces a seed, disintegrates, then becomes a tree and fruit -- Think about these things as you walk around and you will build a connection with the Borei Olom. I once saw Rav Miller on a leil Shabbos. He said to me, “Take a deep breath, three times. Inhale the delicious Brooklyn air. Cocktails.”

It's important to try to make Hashem a real, tangible, part of your da'as.When you start to see all the good that's being sent to you, then when you get a little zetz, we miss a bus, lose a job, your wife says something to you, you already have all the answers: Hashem sent it, it's hashgacha pratis, etc. You are prepared for anything.

This is one way to become the right “party.” And that's step one in our simcha in marriage.