Being For Yourself: Overcoming Laziness and Setting Personal Priorities

Full Summary

This shiur provides a profound psychological analysis of Hillel's teaching in Pirkei Avos: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" Rabbi Zweig addresses the apparent contradiction - why would Hillel tell us to be more for ourselves when most people seem selfish already? The answer lies in understanding that most people actually allow others to set their agenda through social pressure, business demands, and peer influence, rather than establishing their own priorities based on their values. The rabbi examines two fascinating Midrashim about laziness. The first describes a lazy person who makes increasingly absurd excuses to avoid studying Torah (תורה) - first claiming there's a lion on the highway, then in the street, then in the building, and finally being too lazy even to eat. The second Midrash discusses an ant that gathers far more food than it could consume in its six-month lifespan, because "who knows if God will extend my life?" Rabbi Zweig asks why these examples seem so extreme and what they teach about laziness. The key insight is that procrastination reveals our lack of internal strength. When we procrastinate, we create self-induced pressure because we cannot act on our convictions alone - we need external pressure to motivate us. This same susceptibility to pressure makes us vulnerable to others setting our priorities. Procrastination is illogical because problems don't disappear by delaying them; we only increase our anxiety while still having to do the same work later. Rabbi Zweig explains that laziness stems from a psychological connection to death rather than life. A truly lazy person feels they are in a process of dying rather than living, which explains why extreme laziness leads to not wanting to eat - the ultimate expression of giving up on life. The "lion" in the Midrash represents real problems, but while a person connected to life sees problems as challenges to solve, a person connected to death sees every obstacle as a reason not to act. The ant represents the opposite - a creature so connected to life that despite knowing its limited lifespan, it acts as if it might live forever. This isn't delusion but rather living from a place of vitality rather than mortality. The connection to Torah study in these Midrashim reflects that Torah is our ultimate source of life and vitality. The shiur concludes that having personal integrity and setting our own priorities requires feeling truly alive and having a sense of purpose. We must take time to understand who we are and develop a relationship with ourselves. Only when we feel vital and purposeful can we resist external pressures and live according to our own values rather than others' demands.