What’s one of the first things a person does before he starts a game? Learns the object of the game and the rules.

And this I believe is the missing link in understanding and reacting to many things as somewhere somehow the underlying between-the-lines message is that the object and rule of life is: Life is supposed to be easy.

It’s sentences like this that life is supposed to be easy that leads a generation so far away that their children’s children don’t know a word of Torah or even that there is a Torah. Instead of searching for the light at the end of the tunnel we’re grabbing at the luxury of ease which of course takes us in a totally different direction.

The other day I took my daughter to a drama class given in Neve Yerushalayim a school for women baalei teshuvah. Our taxi driver is a non-religious woman and when we pull into the Neve parking lot we see a swarm of girls and I say to the driver “These girls are all baalei teshuvah.” And she says “No. Can’t be. What would make so many go from there to here? And what do they learn all day?”

“Torah” I say. “Halachah. They soak up every word.”

The driver doesn’t get it.

“Imagine living your whole life not knowing that there was a Torah” I say. “That there were actually rules to this crazy game called Life that there was light at the end of this dark tunnel.

“Imagine not knowing there was a G-d to help you in every way every day every second as if you were an orphan alone in a great big world with no direction.

“Then one day someone or something says ‘Hey you out there all alone there’s a whole family waiting for you with an all-loving understanding Father. Come learn the rules. There’ll be challenges but you won’t fall off the board if you learn how to play.”

This past Shabbos we were at our friend’s home. The wife is a well-known speaker. In the kitchen between courses I get a small taste of her last class. She tells me “The Baal Shem Tov says the world was created with five things.

“The first is tzaar [pain]”

I think Wow.

“The next is kabalas ha’tzaar how we accept the pain. How everything is from G-d and everything from Him is good. Third is prayer. If I know that everything is from G-d then I pray that I learn what it is I am supposed to gain from the pain to stand closer to Him. Fourth is redemption. Understanding that the answers to our prayers are the actual yeshuah salvation even if it doesn’t work out the way we thought. And fifth thanking Hashem for the pain so we are able to pray see the salvation learn the lesson and actually be able to turn what seemingly appears bad into good. When the bad turns into good then everything turns good.”

Just hearing that the world is created with pain helps me. I now know the rule of the world — it’s supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to be painful. I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

What a relief.

Now I know the rules of the game. I know how to play. I have pain I daven. Great I know what to do. And then I know what will happen.

So the other morning I got exactly one of these tests — the ones that say “It shouldn’t be like this this is too hard” — and then the “It’s not fair” adrenaline started kicking in and I had to hold myself back like a thirsty man next to a poisonous well. So I walked outside got some fresh air applied this rule — that life is supposed to have pain and I’m supposed to daven and turn it to good. And I did and it passed and I thanked G-d and I have to say it was a completely different day than it could have been had I believed life was supposed to be easy.

There will be a yeshuah and then I know what to say: Thank you Hashem.

And now just as I know that gravity is a built-in feature of the world’s game plan so is tzaar. And just as the goal of gashmiyus materialism is to defy gravity like going to the moon and flying airplanes the goal of the ruchniyus spirituality is to rise above the pain and see the good which elevates us higher. Which means closer to G-d. The object of the game is getting closer.