The Wealthy Businessman and His Coachman

24 Iyar 5782

“He shall not exchange it or offer a substitute for it, whether it be a good one for a bad one, or a bad one for a good one.” (Vayikra 27:10)

“Every person was born to a mission in life that is distinctly, uniquely and exclusively their own. No one—not even the greatest of souls—can take his or her place. No person who ever lived or who ever will live can fulfill that particular aspect of G‑d’s purpose in creation in his stead.” (The Lubavitcher Rebbe)

This point is illustrated by a story told by the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn:

“A wealthy businessman and his coachman arrived in a city one Friday afternoon. After the rich man was settled at the best hotel in town, the coachman went off to his humble lodgings.

Both washed and dressed for Shabbat, and then set out for the synagogue for the evening prayers. On his way to shul, the businessman came across a wagon which had swerved off the road and was stuck in a ditch. Rushing to help a fellow in need, he climbed down into the ditch and began pushing and pulling at the wagon together with its hapless driver. But for all his good intentions, the businessman was hopelessly out of his depth. After struggling for an hour in the knee-deep mud, he succeeded only in ruining his best suit of Shabbat clothes and getting the wagon even more hopelessly embedded in the mud. Finally, he dragged his bruised and aching body to the synagogue, arriving a scant minute before the start of Shabbat.

Meanwhile, the coachman arrived early to the synagogue and sat down to recite a few chapters of Psalms. At the synagogue he found a group of wandering paupers, and being blessed with a most generous nature, invited them all to share his meal. When the synagogue sexton approached the paupers to arrange meal placements at the town’s householders, as is customary in Jewish communities, he received the same reply from them all: ‘Thank you, but I have already been invited for the Shabbat meal.’

Unfortunately, however, the coachman’s means were unequal to his generous heart, and his dozen guests left his table with but a shadow of a meal in their hungry stomachs.

Thus the coachman, with his twenty years of experience in extracting wagons from mudholes, took it upon himself to feed a small army, while the wealthy businessman, whose Shabbat meal leftovers could easily have fed every hungry man within a ten-mile radius, floundered about in a ditch.”

“Each organ receives from it (the soul) a different form of life force and functional power appropriate to it according to its (the organ’s) composition and character: the eye to see, the ear to hear, the mouth to speak, and the feet to walk” (Lessons in Tanya, Likutei Amarim, beginning of Chapter 51)

Just as every organ receives a different form of life force and functional power appropriate to it according to its composition and character, so too “’every soul is entrusted with a mission unique to her alone, and is granted the specific aptitudes, talents and resources necessary to excel in her ordained role. One most take care not to become one of those ’lost souls’ who wander through life trying their hand at every field of endeavor except for what is truly and inherently their own.’” (Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak in conclusion to the story above)

“The heavens are the L‑rd’s heavens, but the earth He gave to the children of man.” (Tehillim 115:16)

We must be constantly aware of the maxim stated in this verse of Tehillim, that the earth belongs to us, the children of man, and it is solely our task to refine and elevate it. In order to do this we each receive a specific mission and the aptitudes, talents and resources necessary in order to fulfill it. We shouldn’t go around looking for spiritual attachment and fulfillment, it is already there where we currently find ourselves by Divine providence. We should use out this current situation to the fullest to refine and uplift our surroundings, making them one with G‑d’s heavens above.