Re’eh: The Life You Don’t Know You’re Choosing

Most of us think we are making choices. Often, we are repeating patterns we learned so long ago that we have stopped calling them patterns and started calling them our personality.Parshas Re’eh begins with a demand: See. See the consequences that remain abstract, the idols we have renamed, and the needs hidden beneath the behaviors we cannot seem to change.In this shiur, delivered at Mishmar in NCSY Kollel, Rav Burg explores why willpower can restrain a behavior without transforming the person; why destroying what is false must be followed by building something true; and how change moves from menuchah—the moments when we visit a different way of living—to nachalah, when that way of living finally has our home address.Real freedom begins when we can see the life we are already choosing—and choose again.