The Secret to Happiness

From Happy with What He Has (#517) by Rabbi Avigdor Miller 

In the midbar (desert), Hakadosh Baruch Hu didn’t give our people any entertainment. There was no "fun" in the midbar in our sense. There was no place to go, even a kosher place like the zoo. No zoos. No Coney Island, no amusement, nothing. Of course no movies, no theaters, no races, there was no television, there was no nothing. Nothing at all.

In the midbar there was nothing at all. Just nothing.

Now don’t think that in those days people were so backwards that they didn’t know of better things. Among the nations there was a lot of fun among the nations. "Vayakumu l’tzachek," the Egyptian geirim (converts) wanted to have a good time. L’tzachek means to make games, whatever the games were. They wanted to play. They had games among the Greeks way back, hippodromes, horse races, gladiators. They had even fighting with animals, bull fights, animal fights.

They had all kinds of amusements in the days of old, don’t think in the ancient times they didn’t have fun. They had music, they had everything. But in the midbar there was nothing at all. Just nothing.

​Not only there was nothing, but nothing to eat in the midbar, just mann for breakfast and supper. Maybe they didn’t even eat lunch, if it was lunch, mann. Every day, Shabbos, yom tov, every day for 40 years. But Hakadosh Baruch Hu was teaching them a great lesson: "Eizeh hu ashir -- who is a rich man? Hasameiach b’chelko — a man who learns to be happy with what he has." That’s the secret to happiness.