Up, Down, and All Around

Once upon a time there was a man who was excelling in every way. He was quite wealthy and one day found a diamond in a garbage pail. It was evaluated to be worth millions of dollars and when he heard that he cried and no-one understood why he cried. As time went on he became poor and suffered from difficulties in every way. One day he hit rock bottom and was found eating a bowl of hot water in a hut and the roof collapsed and plaster fell in his soup. When this happened he laughed and no-one understood why. Then, as time went on, he regained his good fortune. At the end of his life he was asked to explain his odd laughter and tears. He explained that he cried when about the diamond because things had gone so high that he knew it could only go down from there. And he laughed when he hit his lowest point because he knew that from that nadir things could only go up.

Yaakov bowed before Eisav seven times, hinting to the idea that a tzaddik falls seven times and rises. As Rav Hutner explains this - a tzadik rises through falling seven times, not despite the falls.
The process of Yaakov becoming Yisrael included a great deal of difficulty. So too, in our lives our growth includes hardship. Not only is it inevitable that things will change from good to bad and back but moreso it's true that the good actually flows from what we percieve as bad.

As my father, he should live and be well, taught me - the only constant in life is change. As the Vilna Gaon puts it, our perceptions change constantly too. He said: we will laugh tomorrow over what we cried about today and cry tomorrow over what we laughed about today. May we all be blessed to see the hard times as times of growth and to always continue to improve in our love of and closeness to G-d.

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Neil Fleischmann