“Understand their end” - why do we do what we know we will regret?

Most of us know far more than we actually live. We know time is short, anger damages relationships, health requires discipline and children grow quickly. Yet we postpone, get used to things and say: later.

Haazinu says: “If only they were wise... they would understand their end” (Deuteronomy 32:29). Wisdom is not merely knowing that there will be an outcome. Wisdom is giving that outcome a voice in the present.

The future is always quiet next to the present. The comfort is now. The anger is now. The work is now. The cost is far away and therefore feels less real. Then one day the distant future arrives, and we say: I knew.

Our task is not to predict the future. It is to ask before choosing: if I keep going like this, where will it take me? What would the person I will be in a year ask me to do now?

Do not wait to understand your life only while looking backward. Bring a little of that later perspective into today, and give it a vote in your next decision.

What decision would you make differently today if your future self were sitting in the room with you?

Read in depth

Years ago, a man sat across from a doctor after a series of tests. He had not arrived at the hospital in an ambulance, he was not suffering unusual pain, and he did not feel that his life was in danger. On the contrary, he felt more or less fine. He worked, drove, met people, ate normally, and went about his life. The doctor went over the test results, placed them on the table, and said: “I want you to listen very carefully to what I am telling you. Today you feel well, so it will be very easy for you to leave here and return to your normal life. But the tests show that your body is beginning to pay a price. If you continue exactly as you are, in a few years you may find yourself in a completely different place. If you make some serious changes now, there is a very good chance that your future will look different.”

The man was frightened. He asked the doctor questions, tried to understand the numbers, went through the results with him, and even asked him to write down clearly what he needed to do. Before leaving, he said to the doctor: “I understand. This time I am really going to change.” That evening he told his family about the conversation. For several days he was very careful. Then there was a family celebration, and he told himself that one time would not make a difference. The next day was busy and he had no time. The following week he already felt perfectly fine, and when a person feels fine it is very difficult to be moved by a danger that may arrive several years from now. The weeks passed, life returned to its routine, and the page he had received from the doctor remained in a drawer.

Some time later he returned for another test. This time the results were worse. The doctor looked at him and asked a simple question: “Didn’t you understand what I told you last time?” The man was silent for a moment and said: “Doctor, that is exactly the problem. I understood every word you said.”

I think that answer contains one of the great riddles of human life. How is it possible for a person to understand very well what is right, know what may happen, even be able to explain to others what should be done, and still continue living as though he knows nothing? We are accustomed to thinking that our problem is lack of knowledge. If only I knew this was harming me, I would stop. If I understood where this anger would lead, I would be quiet. If I knew how brief the time with my children is, I would make more room for them. If I understood how much a relationship can be damaged by words, I would be more careful. But do we really lack so much information?

There are things we have known for years. A person knows that a message written in anger may look completely different the next morning, yet he still presses “send.” A person knows that a little child will not remain little forever, yet he tells himself that right now he is busy and next week there will be time. A person knows that his parents are not getting younger, yet the call he meant to make is postponed again. A person knows that the body is not a machine that can be neglected endlessly, yet he postpones. A person knows that the years do not come back, yet sometimes he lives as though somewhere there is a warehouse of extra days being saved for him.

Maybe our greatest problem is not that we do not know the future. The problem is that sometimes we know enough to choose differently, but we fail to give the future a vote in the decisions of the present.

In the Song of Haazinu, Moses says an astonishing sentence: “For they are a nation devoid of counsel, and there is no understanding in them. If only they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their end” (Deuteronomy 32:28-29). Notice that Moses uses three expressions: “if only they were wise,” “they would understand this,” “they would discern their end.” The Torah is not speaking only about a person who lacks information. It describes a person who must connect what is before his eyes now with the place toward which things are heading.

Rashi explains that the words “they would discern their end” demand that a person set his heart to consider the outcome toward which events are leading (Deuteronomy 32:29). There is a very deep expression here: it is not enough to know; one must give one’s heart. A person can know that time is precious and still waste it. He can know that words wound and still speak without restraint. He can know that home is the most precious thing and still give the whole world the best of his time while leaving home the leftovers. The knowledge is in the head, but at the moment of decision it is not present in the heart.

The sages tell that Alexander of Macedon asked the elders of the Negev: “Who is wise?” They answered: “One who sees what is being born” (Tamid 32a). They did not say, “one who sees the future.” A person is not a prophet and does not know what will happen tomorrow. They said, “one who sees what is being born,” meaning someone who can see that inside the act he is doing now there is already a reality that may be born from it.

When a person plants a seed, he does not see a tree in front of him, but he understands that the tree begins here. When a person responds again and again in the same way at home, there may not yet be a crisis, but something has already been born. When he postpones something important day after day, there may not be one moment he can point to and say, “Here life changed,” but something has already been born. And the same is true for the good: when a person is silent once in a place where he would usually explode, when he gives a child real time, when he sets a learning schedule and keeps it even on a day he has no desire, when he takes one small step to repair a relationship, something has already been born.

The wise person is not the one who knows with certainty what will happen in ten years. The wise person is the one who can look at the seed and ask what kind of tree may grow from it.

And here may lie one of the greatest powers of the evil inclination. It does not have to convince us that evil is good. Often we know very well that something is not good. It only needs to do one thing: remove the outcome from the picture. In a moment of anger it makes me see only the sentence I must say now. In a moment of insult I see only the need to answer back now. In a moment of desire I see only what I want now. In a moment of laziness I see only how hard it feels now. The future does not disappear, but it becomes distant and quiet.

Therefore King Solomon says: “A prudent man sees danger and hides, but the simple pass on and are punished” (Proverbs 22:3). The danger is not yet present in its full force, and nevertheless the wise person sees the direction and acts before it arrives. By contrast, of the simple it says “they pass on.” He passed the place where it was still possible to stop.

This is a point that should shake us: almost every major mistake in life was preceded by small moments in which it was still possible to change direction. A relationship usually does not break in one day. Before the break there were signs. A harmful habit usually does not take over a person all at once. Before that there were dozens of small choices. Distance between family members does not always begin with a dramatic decision to pull away; sometimes it is built from conversations that never happened, apologies that were postponed, and another week in which each person waited for the other to make the first move.

An entire life is not wasted in a single day either. It can be worn down over thousands of days, each of which by itself seems to decide nothing. That is the trap: the most important things in life almost never collapse in a moment that looks important enough to frighten us. They erode in small portions: another postponement, another concession, another “just this once,” another “starting tomorrow,” another “when I have time.” No single moment looks like a disaster, but the outcome is built from all those small moments.

Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi says in the Mishnah: “Calculate the loss of a mitzvah against its reward, and the reward of a transgression against its loss” (Avot 2:1). What a precise word the Mishnah chose: “calculate.” It does not say that a transgression has no immediate gain. If it had no gain at all, often there would be no test. Anger sometimes brings a gain of a few seconds, because a person feels he has restored his honor. Postponement has a gain, because right now I do not have to make an effort. Wasting time has a gain, because at this moment I am comfortable. The Mishnah does not deny the gain; it tells a person: do not make a partial calculation.

Do not calculate only what you will gain in the next five minutes. Calculate also what this act may cost you in five years. And on the other hand, when a mitzvah demands effort from you now, do not calculate only its price in this moment. Calculate also what kind of person it is building. Sometimes it is hard to get up, hard to persist, hard to give in, hard to restrain oneself, hard to ask forgiveness. But the question is not only how difficult it is for me now; the question is who I am becoming through this choice.

No figure illustrates this struggle more sharply than Esau. He returns from the field exhausted and sees Jacob cooking a stew. He says: “Pour into me some of that red, red stuff, for I am tired” (Genesis 25:30). Jacob asks for the birthright, and Esau replies: “Behold, I am going to die, so what use is the birthright to me?” (Genesis 25:32). Two things stand before Esau: a stew that is now in front of his eyes, and a birthright whose value belongs to the future. The stew is hot, fragrant and here. The birthright is abstract and distant. The Torah concludes the episode with the harsh words: “Esau despised the birthright” (Genesis 25:34).

The Torah does not only say that Esau sold the birthright. It says that he despised it. Because when a person very much wants to choose the small thing in front of him, one way to make that choice easier is to shrink in his own eyes the great thing he is about to lose. A person tells himself that the relationship is no longer what it once was anyway, that this conversation is not so important, that one more day will not change anything, that another wasted hour is not significant, that tomorrow he will begin. In this way he does not merely choose the present; he diminishes the future so that choosing the present will be easier.

Here it is worth asking an uncomfortable question: how many birthrights does a person sell in his life for a bowl of stew that felt terribly urgent at that moment? Not a literal birthright, but an hour with a child, a relationship with a brother, time with parents, a fixed learning schedule, prayer, health, peace at home, or a good decision he knew mattered. The stew always arrives hot, while the birthright is far away. Our lives are often shaped in the struggle between something small and near and something great and distant.

But there is another depth here. Moses, who says “they would discern their end,” is himself standing at the end of his life. In the previous portion he tells Israel: “I am one hundred and twenty years old today; I can no longer go out and come in” (Deuteronomy 31:2). Before him stands a generation at the beginning of a new era, before entering the land, before the houses they will build, the fields they will work, the successes and failures that still await. Moses, standing at the edge of the road, says to the generation at its beginning: understand the outcome.

It is as though Moses says to them: do not wait until you reach the place where I am standing to understand what mattered in the place where you are standing now.

From here arises an enormous question for every one of us: what does a person looking at his life from the far end know that I already know intellectually today but still do not live by? If a person could meet himself twenty or thirty years from now and sit with him for ten minutes, what would that older version ask of him? Would he tell him to win one more argument? Stay another hour at work? Keep holding on to the insult because he is right? Or would he say: come home a little earlier, the children grow faster than you think; call your parents, because there will not always be someone to call; stop wasting years on a quarrel you no longer even remember how it began; open the book you have been saying for years that one day you will study; do not postpone the important life until the urgent things are finished, because urgent things never finish.

The unsettling thing is that we do not really need to meet ourselves in thirty years to know many of the answers. We already know them now. Therefore the pain in the verse is not the pain of someone who did not know. It is the pain of someone who knew very early but began living according to that knowledge very late.

Perhaps this is precisely the deep meaning of a spiritual accounting. We are used to asking what I regret from the past year. But one can ask a stronger question: what regret can I still prevent from next year? What thing, if I keep doing it exactly as I do today, can I already see where it is going? Which relationship needs repair before the distance grows? Which habit must be stopped while it is still small? What good thing am I repeatedly postponing as though time promised to wait for me?

Rabbeinu Yonah of Gerona opens Shaarei Teshuvah by describing the kindness God did with His creatures by opening a path for them to return even after they sinned (Shaarei Teshuvah, Gate One, section 1). But Haazinu reminds us of another kindness: not only the ability to repair after we have erred, but the ability to wake up before we need to repair. Not every lesson must be learned through a fall, and not every truth must be discovered through regret. Torah allows a person to learn through wisdom what life might otherwise teach through pain.

King Solomon says: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring” (Proverbs 27:1). Torah does not require us to know what will happen tomorrow, nor does it offer the illusion that a person controls the future. But there is an enormous difference between not knowing the future and ignoring the direction of our actions. I do not know how many years I will have, but I know that this day will not return. I do not know what my children’s lives will look like, but I know that my presence today enters the memories they will carry. I do not know what my condition will be twenty years from now, but I know that the habits I build today are traveling there with me.

Therefore “they would discern their end” is not a command to fear the future. It is a command to live the present responsibly. Not to predict tomorrow, but to give tomorrow a voice in today’s decision.

Perhaps before we finish, each person should ask only one question: if I know with certainty that this day will never return, what in my life still does not fit that knowledge? Not what I still need to learn and not what secret I am missing, but what I already know and still do not live according to.

We know that time is short. We know children grow. We know parents age. We know words remain long after anger passes. We know small habits become part of personality over the years. We know some opportunities close, and we know that yesterday cannot be recovered. And yet sometimes we manage to treat all of these truths as though they are very true, just not today.

And Moses, standing at the end of his life and looking at a people standing before its future, says: “If only they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their end.” Do not wait until the end to understand the middle. Do not wait for loss to understand value. Do not wait for regret to discover what you knew all along.

Because there are things that time eventually teaches almost everyone. The question is how much tuition we will have to pay. Torah offers us another possibility: to learn from the end before we have reached it, and use what we understand to choose differently today.

Perhaps this is the great wisdom Moses asks of us in Haazinu: not to know how life will end, but to live it in such a way that when we one day look back, we will not have to say in pain: I knew. I knew all along. I only waited too long to start living according to what I already knew.

There is another deep point that must be understood. Why does Moses say, “If only they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their end”? Why is the ability to see the outcome called wisdom? On the surface, no special wisdom is needed to know that actions have consequences. Every child knows that if something is planted, eventually it grows. What, then, is the great wisdom Moses asks of us?

I think the answer lies in the difference between two questions a person can ask before a decision. The first is: what will happen if I do this? That is an important question, but it is still external. The second is much deeper: who will I become if I keep doing this? Every choice has two outcomes. There is what it does in the world, and there is what it does to the person who chose it.

Maimonides writes in the Laws of Repentance that every person can choose his path: “Permission is granted to every person. If he wishes to incline himself toward a good path and be righteous, the permission is in his hand; and if he wishes to incline himself toward an evil path and be wicked, the permission is in his hand” (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 5:1). Notice the language: a person does not merely choose a good act or a bad act. Through his choices he inclines himself in a certain direction. Today’s choice does not remain only in today; it participates in building tomorrow’s person.

Maimonides continues and emphasizes that no external force compels a person to be righteous or wicked; rather, the person himself directs his path through his choices (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 5:2). It follows that the question “they would discern their end” is not only what the result of the act will be, but what kind of person my choices are leading me to become. It may be that the greatest price of a certain act is not what I will lose because of it tomorrow, but who I will become if I repeat it again and again.

This is frightening and encouraging at once. Frightening, because small habits do not remain small. Encouraging, because if a person is built from choices, he can also begin to be rebuilt through one different choice. There is no need to wait for a dramatic moment in which the whole personality turns upside down. Sometimes a new outcome begins with a very small decision made today.

Perhaps that is why in Parashat Nitzavim, so close to the Song of Haazinu, it says: “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil” (Deuteronomy 30:15). The Torah does not say only that it has placed before us a commandment and a transgression. It places two paths before a person and reveals that each path has a continuation. Then it says: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

One must ask: if God has already told us which path is the path of life, what remains to choose? Why is it necessary to command, “choose life”? Because one of the human being’s problems is that even when he knows where life is, what is near and comfortable can appear, at a particular moment, more attractive. The Torah says: do not judge the road only by its first meter. Look where it ends.

There is a road that begins hard and ends in life, and a road that begins comfortable and ends with a heavy price. There is a silence that is very difficult for one minute and saves a relationship of years. There is an apology that hurts pride for five minutes and restores peace to a home. There is an hour of learning that demands effort now but builds an inner world over years. And there are decisions that seem very easy in the first moment, but their bill arrives later.

This may be one of the great differences between a child and an adult. A child struggles to delay gratification because the present moment occupies almost his entire field of vision. As a person matures, he is supposed to acquire the ability to see distance. But one can be very old in age and remain a child in decisions. A person can be fifty years old and still make decisions only according to what feels good in the next five minutes.

Here the matter touches the work of repentance very deeply. Teshuvah is not only looking backward and saying: I made a mistake. Real teshuvah also requires looking forward and saying: if I do not change direction, where will I arrive? Regret deals with the past, but resolution for the future proves that I understood the outcome.

Maimonides defines repentance by saying that the sinner must abandon his sin, remove it from his thoughts, and resolve in his heart not to do it again (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 2:2). In other words, teshuvah does not end with painful emotion about what happened. It reaches the moment when a person looks forward and decides that the past does not receive permission to write the future as well.

There is a person who regrets deeply but does not change route. He cries over what happened and returns to exactly the same road. And there is a person who may not be able to erase what he has already done, but he can stop and say: this story does not have to continue in the same direction. That is an enormous moment of choice, because at that moment the person changes not the past, but the outcome.

Perhaps this gives an entirely new meaning to the words “they would discern their end.” The outcome is not always a decree of fate waiting for us at the end of the road. In a large part of life, the outcome is created by the direction we choose again and again. Therefore, as long as a person is alive and can choose, he can also change direction.

Sometimes a person looks at himself and says: I am already like this. I am hot-tempered. I postpone things. I am not a person who persists. This is how I speak. This is what my home looks like. This is how our relationship has been for years. But the Torah’s doctrine of choice does not allow a person to turn the past into a verdict on the future. The fact that I walked a certain road for years explains why I arrived here; it does not obligate me to keep walking it tomorrow.

Here the verse can be heard not only as rebuke, but as an enormous opportunity. “If only they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their end.” If you understand the outcome before you reach it, you still have the possibility of changing it. As long as the road is before you, another path can be chosen.

There are people who wait until the price is high enough before they change. They wait for the doctor to frighten them, for the child to explode, for the marriage to reach the edge, for the debt to grow, for the habit to become a crisis, for the heart to break. Only then do they say: now there is no choice, something has to be done. Moses offers a higher level: do not wait for the outcome to force you to understand. Understand it while you still have freedom to choose.

This may be the difference between a wise person and someone whom life made wise too late. Both may eventually arrive at the same truth, but one paid a heavy price for it while the other agreed to learn it in time.

Therefore there is one question that can become a practical tool in a person’s work. When you stand before a decision that you know is not merely momentary, do not ask only: is this good or bad? Ask also: if I repeat this choice a hundred times, what kind of person will it turn me into? If the answer frightens you, do not wait for the hundredth time. If the answer delights you, do not dismiss the first time.

Because every great habit once began once. Every great distance began with one small step. And every great repair can also begin with one small step.

Then Moses’ verse stops being about people far from us and becomes a mirror placed before each of us: “If only they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their end.” Can I see inside this day the person I am building for tomorrow?

Perhaps this is one of the Torah’s greatest gifts to a person. It does not allow him to see the future, but it gives him something more important: it teaches him that the future is not only a place he arrives at. To a great extent, the future is also a place he is walking toward.

Therefore, before a habit becomes character, before distance becomes estrangement, before missed opportunity becomes regret, and before another year joins all the years already gone, Moses asks us to stop for a moment and look ahead.

Not in order to fear.

Not in order to guess what will happen.

But in order to choose today the direction for which we will be grateful tomorrow.

“If only they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their end.”

Wisdom is not only understanding life after it has taught us the lesson. Wisdom is understanding the lesson while it can still be used to change life.

But there is one more barrier between a person and the outcome, perhaps the most sophisticated of all. Sometimes the person already sees where things are going. He even knows he must change direction, and still changes nothing. Why? Because he says to himself one small and very dangerous sentence: not now.

I know I need to take care of this, but not now. I know I need to end this quarrel, but after the holidays. I know I need to start learning seriously, but when the busy period passes. I know I need to be home more, but only after I finish this project. I know I need to apologize, but right now it is still too fresh. The person does not say the matter is unimportant. On the contrary, he admits its importance. He only makes one assumption for which he has no evidence at all: that there will be a later.

Here the sages say a short sentence that dismantles this illusion at its root. Hillel the Elder says: “Do not say, ‘When I am free I will study,’ for perhaps you will not become free” (Avot 2:4). The Mishnah does not say, “perhaps you will not live,” but something much closer to our reality: “perhaps you will not become free.” You may live many more years, but the free time you are waiting for may simply never arrive. Life does not empty itself of obligations. When one problem ends, another enters. When the children are small we wait for them to grow; when they grow there are other challenges. When one commitment ends, the next is already waiting.

A person waits for the moment when life will step aside and allow him to begin living what truly matters to him. The sages tell him: that moment may never come. If something matters, do not build it on the time that will remain. Give it a place within the time you have.

This connects in a frightening way to the words “they would discern their end.” One of our great mistakes is thinking that the end is very far away. But the end does not begin on the last day of life. Every period has an end. A child’s childhood has an end. The period in which our parents are still with us has an end. The years in which the body allows us certain things have an end. An opportunity has an end. Even a quarrel has a stage when it is still relatively easy to repair, and then comes a stage in which years of silence, anger and memories have accumulated on top of it.

Ecclesiastes says: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). We usually hear in this verse that there is an appropriate time for everything, but there is also a demanding message: if there is a time for something, that means this time is not necessarily eternal. There are things one can do next year as well, and there are things that, if not done now, next year can no longer be done in the same way.

A father can tell a six-year-old child: “In a little while I will play with you.” One day the child will be sixteen, and perhaps he will no longer ask. A person can tell his mother: “Mom, I am busy this week; we will talk next week.” He can say it many times until one day he would give anything for one more phone call. A person can tell himself: “When I am freer, I will start learning,” until he discovers that the years during which he was sure he would begin soon were themselves his life.

This is not a message about fear of death. It is a message about windows of time. God gives a person possibilities, but not every possibility remains open in the same way forever. “They would discern their end” means understanding that even what I have now has an end, and therefore the value of the present comes not only from what is in it, but also from the fact that it passes.

Here we can understand more deeply the words of Rabbi Eliezer in the Mishnah: “Repent one day before your death” (Avot 2:10). The Gemara asks how a person can know on which day he will die, and Rabbi Eliezer answers that on the contrary, since he does not know, he should repent today lest he die tomorrow, and all his days will then be in repentance (Shabbat 153a). The sages are not asking a person to live with a morbid feeling that tomorrow he may die. They are trying to break another illusion: the confidence that we will always have tomorrow to do what we know must be done today.

There is a huge difference between someone who lives in fear that he has no tomorrow and someone who lives with the awareness that he does not own tomorrow. The first is afraid of life; the second respects life. He knows that the day given to him is not a draft for the real life that will begin in the future. This day is part of life itself.

Perhaps this is why the word “today” appears so often in the Torah when it speaks about choice and the service of God. “See, I have set before you today life and good” (Deuteronomy 30:15). “Choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). Torah does not tell a person to choose life one day when conditions are perfect. Choice is made within the day you were given, with its fatigue, pressure, difficulties, and the fact that not everything is arranged as you would like.

This may be one of the things the evil inclination succeeds at most. It does not always tell a person, “Do not do it.” Sometimes it tells him: “Of course you will do it, just not today.” It does not need to make you give up on the class; it is enough to make you begin next month. It does not need to convince you that there is no need to reconcile with your brother; it is enough to tell you that now is not the time. It does not need to make you decide never to change that trait; it is enough to make you believe that in the future there will be a freer, calmer and stronger version of you who will do the work for you.

But that future person is the same person as today, only with more years of habit.

This is a point worth stopping at. When a person says, “Tomorrow I will change,” who is supposed to change tomorrow? The same person who did not want to change today. And if today I strengthen the very habit I want to escape, why do I assume tomorrow will be easier? Sometimes postponement does not leave the situation in place; postponement itself strengthens the very condition I want to change.

King Solomon says: “The path of the wicked is like darkness; they do not know at what they stumble. But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, shining ever brighter until full day” (Proverbs 4:18-19). A path is not a collection of separate points. It goes somewhere. Every small step joins the step before it. Therefore Torah does not ask a person to solve his entire life today, but to choose the step that shifts the road in the right direction.

This also gives enormous hope. If the outcome is built from small steps, I do not have to wait for a revolution in order to begin changing it. Perhaps I cannot repair a twenty-year relationship today, but I can make one phone call. Perhaps I cannot become in one day a person who studies three hours every evening, but I can open a book for twenty minutes today. Perhaps I cannot immediately repair a character trait that has accompanied me for decades, but I can defeat it once today. Perhaps I cannot know what my life will look like in ten years, but I can choose what my next step will be in ten minutes.

This may be the deep connection between “they would discern their end” and repentance. Teshuvah does not require a person to return to yesterday, because no one can do that. It requires him to take responsibility for the direction from this moment onward. The past explains where I came from, but it does not have to decide where I continue.

Therefore the question is not only: what will my outcome be? The practical question is: what outcome am I beginning to build today? If I know there is something I must repair, what am I waiting for? If I know there is someone I need to speak with, what exactly is supposed to happen that will make the timing better? If I know there is a good thing I want as part of my life, why am I leaving it dependent on free time that may never come?

Moses says: “If only they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their end.” Perhaps wisdom is not only seeing what will be at the end of the road. Wisdom is understanding that the end is being built now, inside days that look completely ordinary.

A person does not lose his life on its final day. He lives it day by day. A person also does not build his life in one great and wondrous day. He builds it on an ordinary Monday, a crowded Tuesday, an evening when he is tired, a moment when no one applauds the choice he made.

In the end, our great lives are made of the small moments in which we decided what mattered more than what.

Perhaps, then, one need not leave Haazinu with ten decisions. One decision that must no longer be postponed is enough. Every person knows inside himself what it is. Something about which he has long said “one day.” Someone about whom he has long said “I need to talk to him.” A class he says he will attend “when things calm down.” A change he knows he needs to make but keeps depositing in the hands of tomorrow.

About that, Torah says: do not wait for the outcome in order to understand. Understand now so that the outcome will be different.

The great tragedy is not that a person reaches the end and says: “I did not know.” There are things that could not have been known. The great tragedy is to reach the end and say: “I knew. I understood. I even wanted to. I just always thought there was more time.”

Against that sentence, the Song of Haazinu calls to us now: “If only they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their end.” If you understood, do not leave the understanding for tomorrow. Turn it into a choice today, because sometimes the entire difference between wisdom and regret is one thing: when we did something with what we knew.

There may be another way to understand just how much “they would discern their end” is not merely a beautiful idea but a practical force in a person’s work. The sages teach that sometimes the entire difference between falling and standing in a test is whether a person can, in the stormy moment, see something beyond that moment.

The Gemara in tractate Sotah tells of Joseph the righteous when he faced the trial of Potiphar’s wife. The Torah says: “It happened on a certain day that he came into the house to do his work, and none of the men of the house was there in the house” (Genesis 39:11). The sages describe how the test reached a decisive point, and then say something remarkable: “At that moment the image of his father came and appeared to him in the window” (Sotah 36b). Jacob is not in Egypt. He is very far away. But at the moment when the present threatens to take over Joseph’s entire world, suddenly something greater than the moment enters the room.

The sages continue and describe Jacob as though saying to Joseph that the names of his brothers are destined to be inscribed on the stones of the ephod, and asking whether he wants his own name erased from among them. Suddenly the test is not only a question of the next few minutes. Joseph sees who he is, where he comes from, and where this act may take him. In one instant, the outcome enters the present.

Perhaps this is a very deep idea in the words of the sages. What saved Joseph? Not new information about the prohibition. Joseph already knew the act was forbidden. He himself had already said: “How then can I do this great evil and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:9). The problem in the moment of trial was not that he lacked knowledge. The problem was that the moment had become enormous. Then the image of his father appeared and brought his entire story back into that moment.

This is exactly what we sometimes need. Not more information, but a window.

When anger fills the room, we need a window through which we can see the home after the anger. When desire fills the entire picture, we need a window through which a person can see who he wants to be after the moment passes. When a person is about to do something he knows he will regret, he needs to open a window toward the outcome and ask: how will I see this moment tomorrow morning?

This turns the words “they would discern their end” into a very practical tool. Before an act filled with emotional storm, a person can ask himself: if I were already after this act, what would I ask myself to do now?

That is a powerful question because after an act, things often become clear. After the anger falls, the person knows exactly which word was unnecessary. After the opportunity has passed, he knows how precious it was. After time has been lost, he knows what should have been done with it. Torah asks a person to do one thing: bring some of the clarity of “after” into the fog of “before.”

Perhaps this is why the “image of his father” is such a powerful picture. Jacob is not only Joseph’s father; he reminds Joseph that this moment does not stand by itself. It has a past, an identity and a future. He is Jacob’s son. He is part of the twelve tribes. He carries a story greater than the room he is standing in now.

How many trials would look different if, in the moment of truth, we remembered that we are part of a larger story? I am not only the person who is angry now. I am also a father, a husband, a son, a Jew, a person whose actions influence others, and a person I still want to become. Am I willing, for this moment, to endanger something from all of that?

Not from fear of what others will say, but from loyalty to my identity.

King Solomon says: “The soul of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the innermost chambers” (Proverbs 20:27). There is a point within a person that can illuminate even rooms he would rather leave dark. Sometimes a person does not need someone outside to tell him what is right; he needs a few seconds of quiet to hear what he himself already knows.

This may be one of the great practical lessons to take from this message: do not make a large decision inside a small moment. When you are very angry, do not decide the fate of a thirty-year relationship. When you are deeply hurt, do not say a sentence that will live longer than the insult that produced it. When you are despairing, do not make decisions about your entire future from one hard evening. Let the moment pass, and then let the outcome enter the room.

But there is another depth to the words “they would discern their end.” Not every outcome we need to see is negative. Sometimes a person gives up precisely because he cannot see the good being born from his small effort. A person begins to learn and after two weeks does not feel that he has become a Torah scholar, so he stops. A person begins to work on a character trait and after a month still fails, so he becomes discouraged. A parent invests in a child and does not immediately see a result, so he wonders whether there is any point.

Here too we need “they would discern their end.” There are seeds that do not bear fruit on the day they are planted.

King David says: “He who goes forth weeping, bearing the seed, shall come back with joy, carrying his sheaves” (Psalms 126:6). There is a moment when a person carries only seeds. There are no sheaves yet, no result and no applause. He plants and weeps. But the verse teaches that the person who does not stop the story in the middle can see that sowing too has an end.

This is very important, because seeing the outcome is not only a brake that stops us from doing wrong. It is also a force that allows us to continue doing good when we still cannot see results.

A person who studies one page and then another needs to see a little of the outcome in order not to despair from the beginning. A person working on his anger and failing again needs to know that the one time he succeeded in remaining silent is not a small thing. A father who gives his child ten minutes of real listening may not know what those ten minutes will mean twenty years from now. A teacher who said one good sentence to a student does not know whether that sentence will accompany him for life.

We are accustomed to measuring actions by the result we see immediately. Torah teaches us to measure them also by the outcome we cannot yet see.

This brings us back to the beginning. The man sitting across from the doctor knew what he had to do, but the future was far away and so the present won. Torah asks us to reverse the order: take something distant and bring it close enough to influence the decision now.

Perhaps this is why Moses does not say “they would know their end,” but “they would discern their end.” Knowledge can remain in the head. Real understanding changes a choice.

Here I would ask each person not to think about ten things now. Think about only one. What decision in your life would change if you could see its outcome clearly right now?

Perhaps it is a word you need to stop saying. Perhaps a person you need to begin speaking with. Perhaps a habit whose direction you know very well. Perhaps learning you keep postponing. Perhaps a child asking for your presence. Perhaps a good decision you are close to abandoning because you still do not see fruit.

Do not try to see the whole future. Open only one window.

See yourself for a moment afterward.

See the home afterward.

See the child afterward.

See the relationship afterward.

See yourself several years from now looking back at the decision you are about to make today.

Then return to this moment.

Now the choice already looks different.

Perhaps this is what Moses asks of the generation standing before him, and perhaps what he asks of every generation after it: “If only they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their end.” Do not live only inside the moment you are in. Give what has not yet happened a place in the decision you are making now.

One of the greatest gifts God gave a person is the ability to stop one moment before, see with the mind’s eye what he may otherwise understand too late, and choose differently.

If we do this, perhaps we can spare ourselves one of the most painful sentences a person can say: “I wish I had thought about that then.”

Haazinu tells us: do not wait for “I wish.”

Think about it then, while “then” is still now.

But after all this, one deeper question remains. If a person truly learns to look toward the outcome, what exactly will change in his life? Will he merely be more careful about transgressions, think one more moment before speaking, and make more balanced decisions? Moses seems to ask much more than that. “They would discern their end” is not merely a tool for making correct decisions. The outcome can reveal to a person what truly matters to him.

There are things that seem enormous while we are inside them, but become very small when viewed from the distance of years. And there are things that seem small and marginal today, but when we look at life as a whole, it becomes clear that they were the truly great things. An insult can fill a person’s entire week, but twenty years later he barely remembers what offended him. By contrast, one hour he sat with his father, one conversation in which he truly listened to his child, one study partnership he maintained for years, one act of kindness he did for someone in a hard moment - these can remain part of him long after the great noise of that day has disappeared.

Moses says: “They would discern their end.” Try measuring the things of today also by the measures of the outcome. Not everything shouting now is truly important, and not everything quiet now is truly small.

The Mishnah in Avot says in the name of Rabbi Yaakov: “This world is like a corridor before the World to Come; prepare yourself in the corridor so that you may enter the banquet hall” (Avot 4:16). This does not mean that this world lacks value. Exactly the opposite. If this world is the corridor in which a person prepares himself, then every moment here receives enormous meaning. The choices that look small to us are the material from which life is built.

Later Rabbi Yaakov says something even sharper: “One hour of repentance and good deeds in this world is better than all the life of the World to Come” (Avot 4:17). Why is one hour in this world so precious? Because here there is something that is not there: the possibility of choice. Now one can repair, now one can overcome, now one can ask forgiveness, now one can learn, now one can give, now one can choose.

Here “they would discern their end” receives another meaning. The outcome does not come to tell a person that the present lacks importance because everything eventually passes. It says exactly the opposite: because the present passes, it has an importance that cannot be recreated.

There is a sentence a person can say today that tomorrow he may no longer be able to say to the same person. There is a mitzvah one can do today and tomorrow the conditions will be different. There is a child asking today for his father’s attention, and in a few years he will no longer ask for it in the same way. There is a person who can be appeased now, and if we wait more years perhaps the hearts will harden. The outcome does not lower the value of today. It reveals how precious today is.

Perhaps this explains why the Torah says in Nitzavim: “For this commandment that I command you today is not too wondrous for you and is not distant” (Deuteronomy 30:11), and later: “For the matter is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it” (Deuteronomy 30:14). We sometimes search for great change in a distant place, at another time, in another version of ourselves. Torah brings us back to the only place where we can truly choose: today, in the mouth, in the heart and in action.

A person can think for years about the person he wants to be. He may want to be a more patient father, a better husband, a son who honors his parents more, a person who learns more, prays with more intention, and has more control over his traits. But as long as these things exist only in the future, they remain a dream. In the end, the person we become in ten years will be built from the choices that seem small today.

Here a very difficult question awakens: if someone saw only my schedule, without hearing any explanation from me, would he be able to know what truly matters to me?

We say family is important to us. How much time does it receive? We say Torah is our life. What place does it receive in our day? We say our relationship with God is precious to us. What happens when prayer collides with something urgent? We say our character matters to us. What happens at the moment our honor is wounded?

In the end, a person’s real order of priorities is not written only in what he says matters to him. It is also written in where he places his time, attention and energy.

Perhaps this is why Moses is not satisfied with the word “end.” He says “they would discern their end.” To understand the outcome means using it as a mirror for the present. If what I am chasing today will look meaningless to me in twenty years, perhaps I do not need to give it my whole heart today. And if something I neglect today will look very precious when I look back, perhaps I must not continue treating it as though it can wait.

King David asks a remarkable request: “Make known to me, Lord, my end and the measure of my days, what it is, that I may know how fleeting I am” (Psalms 39:5). He does not ask to know the day of his death in order to live in fear. He asks that awareness of the limit give meaning to the life inside the limit. A person who thinks he has unlimited time can postpone even important things without end. When he understands that time is a limited gift, he begins to choose.

Moses himself prays: “Teach us to number our days, that we may acquire a heart of wisdom” (Psalms 90:12). What a precise connection to the Song of Haazinu. Counting the days is meant to bring a person to a “heart of wisdom.” Not fear, sadness or despair, but wisdom. Knowing that the days are not endless should teach me how to use the day I have.

Notice that here too wisdom is connected to time. In Haazinu: “If only they were wise... they would discern their end.” In Psalms: “Teach us to number our days, that we may acquire a heart of wisdom.” Perhaps Torah teaches us that a wise person is not only someone who knows a great deal. A wise person is someone who knows what is worth doing with the time he has been given.

This brings us to the point of conclusion. We do not know how much time we have, and we do not know what a day may bring. But we do not need to know the whole future in order to live differently today. We only need to be honest enough to ask ourselves: what do I already know about the outcome of the road I am walking?

If there is something I know I will regret not repairing, why wait for regret? If there is someone I know I will regret not drawing closer to, why wait for longing? If there is Torah I know I will regret not learning, why wait for the years to pass? If there is a character trait whose direction I know, why wait until it becomes an even deeper part of my personality?

“They would discern their end” does not mean living at the end. It means allowing the end to teach us how to live the middle.

Here I would return for a moment to the man sitting across from the doctor at the beginning. The doctor asked him: “Didn’t you understand?” He answered: “I understood everything.” Perhaps that is one of the answers we least want to give one day about our lives. Not to say: I did not know. But to say: I knew time was precious, I knew children grow, I knew parents are not here forever, I knew words leave marks, I knew my habits were building me, I knew what truly mattered to me - and still I postponed the life I knew I wanted to live.

Against that possibility, Moses cries to us from the Song of Haazinu: “If only they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern their end.”

Do not wait for the outcome to prove to you that you were right about what you already knew.

If you know someone is precious to you, let that person know today. If you know something needs repair, begin today. If you know there is something distancing you from the person you want to be, do not wait for it to grow stronger. And if you know there is a good thing you want to accompany your life, do not entrust it to the hands of “one day.”

Because the great question of life is not only what we knew.

The question is when we began living according to what we knew.

And perhaps this is Moses’ request of us in Haazinu: do not understand life only when you are looking back at it. Take a little of the perspective of the end, bring it into today, and let it change your next choice.