Question & Answer With Rabbi Lazer Brody - Last In A Lifetime

(Painting by Anne Gromat)

A Simple Jew asks:

Before saying a brocha, davening, or performing any other mitzva do you think that it is possible or even advisable for a person to have the intention that this is the last mitzva he will be doing in his lifetime?

Rabbi Lazer Brody answers:

"The last mitzva he will be doing in his lifetime," is the mindset of fatalism and not conducive to serving Hashem with joy. The Breslev attitude is apparently similar, but really quite different in substance. Rebbe Nachman teaches us to focus on the present (see Likutei Moharan I:272). An important principle - both in spiritual and in material endeavors - is to focus on the task before us and to live the current moment to the hilt. People exert so much energy fretting about the past and worrying about the future that they waste or fail to take advantage of the present.

We therefore should focus on the mitzva we're doing right now. When we put on tefillin in the morning, we don't try to enhance kavanna by fantasizing that this is our last day on earth, Heaven forbid. We simply focus on the mitzva we're doing right now, because nothing else is important. At this given moment, all we care about is the mitzva at hand.

By utilizing the present moment as much as we can, we amazingly become much better achievers in every way. That's exactly how our sages accomplished so much in a lifetime.