A tormented man once wrote to the Rebbe regarding his recurring dreams about the world’s many atrocities. In these dreams, the man wrote, he was overwhelmed by the never-ending injustice in the world. The solution presented in his dreams was to “ascend,” that is, to take his own life. No amount of dream interpretation or expert counsel had helped him understand the meaning behind his dreams. In writing to the Rebbe, he sought guidance about how to discern their deeper meaning.
The Rebbe replied:
“…It is certain that the message of your dream is not about injustices in the world in the literal sense. For such issues are completely beyond your ability to rectify. Rather, the straightforward meaning of your dream is clear: You are being shown that you need to be ‘angry’ about the fact that your world—your personal life, over which you exercise full control—is being conducted ‘unjustly…’”1
The implications here are profound, and they provide a paradigm shift for anyone struggling to discover a personal sense of purpose amid the myriad problems of the world.
Indeed, finding individual purpose and meaning is among life’s greatest challenges. It is so challenging that we may avoid the question altogether by escaping into our momentary and immediate existence—whether that be work, relationships, or passions.
But the question of our life’s purpose will always catch up to us.
And in this historical moment, those ready to face the question of their life’s purpose can experience incredible difficulty. Thanks in large part to global information technologies, the question of our individual place and purpose in the world has become exceedingly overwhelming, and it is measured on a global scale.
Until very recently in history, the vast majority of us lived and died within fifty miles of the place where we were born. And even then, it was difficult to discern one’s life’s direction and meaning.
Today, mobile technologies put the world, its problems, and its possibilities in our hands. The number of registered mobile broadband subscriptions around the world increased from two hundred sixty-eight million active users in 2007 to an estimated 7.3 billion connections in 2023.2 Meanwhile, a weekday edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across during a lifetime in seventeenth-century England.3 In 2012, more data was transmitted across the Internet each second than was stored in the whole Internet during the previous twenty years.4 As our awareness of the world dilates faster than most can keep up, the question of our individual purpose and contribution can become paralyzing.5 6
This state leaves the typical individual unmoored and disoriented, struggling to find their proverbial footing.
Increasingly, solutions to the resulting feelings of powerlessness are sought in mythologies defined by hyperbolic heroism. This trend can be seen in the exploding global popularity of comic books and their cinematic spinoffs. More and more, these mega-mythologies depict unlikely heroes arising from obscurity to save everything from one threat or another. Comic book storylines have expanded their scope exponentially, with “your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man” abandoning his local neighborhood to save the whole planet, other planets, galaxies, or even the entire universe.
Increasingly, emerging mythologies encourage us to emulate such outsized heroics. It is implied that if the stars align and you do the right things with enough audacity, you, too, can save the whole world from looming disaster. And while these stories may occasionally encourage real-life heroes to emerge, they can just as often leave us feeling overwhelmed, disempowered, and diminished.
In this world of overwhelming opportunity and possibility, the Rebbe repeatedly taught those struggling to find their personal mission and meaning to begin their journey by asking not, “How can I change the world?” but “How can I change my world?”7
Signature Sparks
This seemingly pragmatic perspective emerges from the deeper, metaphysical premise that G‑d chooses a particular part of this world for each of us to nurture, impact, elevate, and illuminate. In the language of Kabbalah, before descending into this world, each soul is allocated a portion of the world, chelko ba’olam, and tasked with elevating certain “sparks” in specific locations at precise times that are intrinsically connected to our soul and its mission.8
Hidden within our personal mission and life story are heavenly orchestrations that gently direct us to the places, people, endeavors, and opportunities that are uniquely ours to uplift. Within Kabbalah, it is said that these unique opportunities—these sparks—have been waiting since the beginning of creation for our particular souls to redeem them. In fact, the mystics teach that these sparks have our names written on them, so to speak, and that no soul, prior to or following our stay on earth, can do the sacred work that is destined for us. It is here, inhabiting our part of this exquisitely crafted cosmic tapestry, that we discover our purpose in life. And this principle, however modest it may seem in its ambition, is absolutely essential in helping us design the focus of our impact.
Here, some may ask, “In an age of overwhelming injustice and global catastrophe, how could anyone choose to focus their efforts anywhere but everywhere?”
And herein lies a potential trap that can ensnare us as we search for our life’s purpose.
The Rebbe spoke to this in the late 1960s, at the height of the Vietnam War, when he was approached by a Jewish chaplain on a college campus who asked how much time he should invest in anti-war and human rights demonstrations. Essentially, he wanted to know from the Rebbe how much of his time was too much if his participation in anti-war efforts came at the expense of his service to the local Jewish student body he was responsible to serve?
The Rebbe replied:
“...You have a responsibility to bring benefit to every human being. At the same time, you must consider the priorities presented to you by your current circumstances. If two people were drowning, and one was a stranger and you could save only one of them, wouldn’t your brother come first?”9
Here we have a man deeply affected by a violent international conflict that had awoken global outrage and massive demonstrations that had their own sort of gravity, pulling anyone with a conscience toward them. For the socially and politically conscious, helping to end the war in Vietnam was depicted—and for many emphatically believed to be—a moral responsibility for anyone available to participate.
In response, the Rebbe brought the focus back to the chaplain’s personal and immediate circumstances and responsibilities, punctuated by a starkly clarifying series of questions:
“How can I better my immediate surroundings? How can I best address the needs and dreams of those whom Divine Providence has brought into my personal orbit and sphere of life; my family, my friends, my community, and my people?”
This fundamental principle is rooted in an essential Talmudic passage that teaches:
“If you have the choice between supporting those who are poor in your family or the poor of your city, the poor in your family take precedence. [If the choice is between] the poor of your city and the poor of another city, the poor of your city take precedence.”10
Such a localized approach to social change provides the basis of the Jewish notion of Tikkun Olam—repairing the world.11
This was the message the Rebbe shared with Janice Robertson, a leader in the Black community who was running for City Council. One Sunday morning, she joined the Sunday Dollars line and approached the Rebbe to ask for a blessing.
The Rebbe blessed her and said:
“By bringing more peace in one part of New York, you’re automatically increasing the measure of peace in all of New York and after that in all of the United States. May G‑d A-mighty bless that there be peace in all the nations around the world.”12
Ripple Effect
This model of reverberating influence championed by the Rebbe—the kind that infinitely ripples out beyond its initial point of impact—begins with one person living out their unique purpose.
This point is powerfully reinforced in a story told by R. Chaim Gutnick about his efforts to organize a series of women’s classes on the advice of the Rebbe. As it happened, just one woman arrived week after week to receive his teachings. A year later, during a follow-up visit, the Rebbe asked about the success of the classes. R. Gutnick related how he and his wife organized and promoted the event and worked hard to prepare for it. Yet, despite all their labor, only one woman showed up to the classes, leaving him feeling that all that effort had been a waste.
The Rebbe grew serious as he asked, “R. Chaim! Tell me, how many mothers did Moses have?”13
The Rebbe was teaching R. Gutnick, and each of us by extension, that we must never underestimate the power of even a single individual. We can never know what long-term impact our one blessing, one teaching, one smile, one good deed can have on the person we’re interacting with, and its ripple effect on all the people with whom they come into contact.
This was the message offered to R. Sholom Ber Lipskar, the shliach to Bal Harbour, Florida, who is renowned for his oratory and eloquence.
“A certain benefactor was very inspired by our work and offered me an unlimited amount of money to spread ‘my’ message of accessible Judaism in a massive campaign across the country. The Rebbe rejected the idea outright.
“National media campaigns might be nice, but real impact is made organically, from the ground up, when a shliach makes a real connection with a person, who goes on to form more connections himself. That’s how real change and success happens.”14
The Rebbe explained this crucial point further in discussion with a young rabbi who was involved with outreach projects as well as a fledgling business and was feeling overwhelmed. He visited the Rebbe to discuss which of the areas he should focus on.
To his surprise, the Rebbe replied, “Not only should you not cut back on your activities, but you should increase your outreach efforts, your rabbinic work, and also your business.”
“I’m humbled by your faith in me,” exclaimed the rabbi, “but I don’t feel it’s realistic for me to manage all these tasks at once!”
The Rebbe looked at him warmly and said, “I’ll tell you what your difficulty is. You are viewing human interactions like chemical interactions. When two elements interact, they result in the creation of a third compound. But people aren’t chemicals. When people interact it’s like a nuclear reaction.
“A nuclear reaction has a center, from which further reactions spread in all directions. As the outer rings of that sphere get larger, the number of reactions grows exponentially. Likewise, when you touch the heart of one person very deeply—even if only for a moment—he in turn will touch many other people, triggering a nuclear explosion of positive influence.”15 16
Here, we can see the so-called “butterfly effect,” representing an aspect of chaos theory that suggests that in complex systems such as weather dynamics, even the smallest changes can have tremendous, far-reaching impacts. To explain this mathematical theorem, founder Edward Norton Lorenz used the poetic example of how a tornado’s path can be shifted by tiny changes in the atmosphere, such as those generated by the beat of a butterfly’s wings.
Act Locally, Impact Globally
The Torah offers its own example of this exponential effect in the story of Joseph, who rose from slavery to become the viceroy of Egypt, gaining international acclaim when he single-handedly saved the country and its neighbors from devastating famine and economic ruin.
During a talk he gave in 1973, the Rebbe offered the following penetrating insight.
If we are to pinpoint the event that set off Joseph’s dramatic and meteoric rise from prisoner to second-in-command over that ancient superpower, it would undoubtedly be a conversation that took place between Joseph and his cellmates one morning in a dark Egyptian prison cell.
Upon encountering the despair written all over the faces of Pharaoh’s ex-butler and baker, Joseph asked compassionately, “Why are your faces downcast today?”17
So attuned was he to their emotional state that he detected in their despondent demeanor a further deterioration from yesterday to today. “Why are your faces downcast today?”
He then proceeded to help them by interpreting their dreams, future, and fate. And it was as a result of his accurate predictions that he was later enlisted to help Pharaoh interpret his own dreams.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Joseph proceeds to implement a system that saves Egypt from starvation, transforms its economy, and ends up providing safe passage for his family, who immigrated to Egypt to escape the famine in Canaan.
But on the morning that Joseph’s fate would change, he wasn’t busy thinking globally, about politics, power, fortune, or fame.
On that day, he didn’t wake up asking himself, “How can I change the world?”
Instead, he asked himself, “How can I change my world, and my surroundings,” which at the time consisted of a prison cell and two miserable cellmates.
Joseph understood that true success is defined by the quality of your response to the needs of the people in front of you and in your ability to faithfully hear G‑d’s call in those challenges you never sought and those situations you never planned for.
This principle is again articulated in the very first Biblical scene in which we are introduced to Moses, who is inarguably one of the most influential men in history. Moses did not begin his illustrious career in leadership looking for greatness or grandeur. His soul was stirred to action by an injustice he stumbled upon and chose to respond to.
As the Torah recounts:
In those days, Moses grew up and went out to his brothers and observed their suffering. He saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man of his brothers. He turned this way and that way, and he saw that there was no man; so he struck the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.18
In other words, Moses did not wake up that morning, look in the mirror, and ask, “How can I change the world and go down in history as the man who brought Egypt to its knees and gave voice to a downtrodden people?”
Instead, he asked himself, “How can I change my world? How can I stop the injustices taking place in my neighborhood, to my people, to the man being beaten before my eyes?”
Ultimately, real world-changing leaders such as Joseph and Moses rarely set out to be powerful and influential figureheads. They simply respond to the call of the hour and their immediate environment, and in so doing, they discover their personal calling and mission. This casts the popular slogan, “Think Globally, Act Locally” in a wonderful new light, demonstrating the counterintuitive spiritual truth that those who think locally, can, in the end, act globally and change the world in the process.
Quiz Yourself
Do the Thought Exercise
Whenever you’re asked to get involved in a particular cause, stop and meditate on the Jewish approach to global change: “Ask not how I can change the world, but how I can change my world.”
Take the Challenge
Take note of a problem or one individual in your immediate environment that can use your help. Spend a few minutes thinking about what you can practically do to help, and then make a plan to actually do it. Leave your ideas in the comments, so we can inspire each other.
Join the Discussion