If you already know, why are you still not doing it?

There comes a moment when a person discovers that he does not need more information. He already knows.

He knows anger damages, children need time, prayer needs heart, health requires discipline, and words can destroy. If there were an exam on all of this, he might get a perfect score.

Then comes the difficult question: if I know, why am I still not doing it?

Moses says: “A foolish people and unwise” (Deuteronomy 32:6). Not a people that knows nothing. A person can know a great deal and still lack wisdom, because wisdom is the ability to let knowledge enter decisions, habits and action.

We love to search for one more class, one more insight, one more sentence that will move us. Sometimes nothing new is missing.

Perhaps this year we do not need ten new commitments. Perhaps we need one truth we have known for years and the courage to say: until now I knew it. From now on I will begin to live it.

What truth do you already know well, but have still not allowed to change even one behavior?

Read in depth

A man went to a doctor after his blood tests had worsened considerably. The doctor reviewed the results with him and began explaining what he needed to change. The man stopped him and said, “Doctor, you don’t need to explain. I know exactly what you are going to say. I need to lose weight, eat less sugar, exercise, sleep more, and reduce stress.”

The doctor smiled and asked, “Then why did you come to me?”

The man said, “Because my condition is not good.”

The doctor looked at him and said, “Then your problem is not that you lack information. Your problem is that the information you have has not yet managed to become life.”

That is a difficult sentence, because it is true in far more areas than health.

There are things that, if we were tested on them, we would score one hundred. Is anger a good thing? Of course not. Must one be careful about lashon hara? Certainly. Should one honor one’s spouse? Obviously. Do children need time and not only money? We all know that. Does Torah need fixed study times? Yes. Does prayer require concentration? Certainly. Should one forgive? Should one yield? Is time precious? Is life short? We know all the answers.

Then comes the difficult question: if we know so much, why does what we know change us so little?

In the Song of Haazinu, Moses says: “Is this how you repay the Lord, foolish people and unwise? Is He not your Father Who acquired you? He made you and established you” (Deuteronomy 32:6).

We need to understand the phrase “and unwise.” Moses is speaking to a generation that heard Torah from him. These were people who saw miracles, lived in the wilderness, and received commandments. Is the real problem that they lack information?

Rashi explains the words “and unwise” as: “to understand what will result, for it is in His power to do good and to do harm” (Deuteronomy 32:6).

This is a major insight. A person can know many facts and still not be wise. Because wisdom in Torah is not only knowing what is right. Wisdom is taking what I know and seeing where my actions are leading.

A person knows anger destroys, but in the moment of anger that knowledge is not in the room.

A person knows children grow up, but while they are small he is too busy.

A person knows parents will not be here forever, but it always seems possible to call tomorrow.

A person knows life is short, yet wastes hours on things he himself would say are unimportant.

A person knows Yom Kippur is coming, but even this year he can arrive almost without preparation.

This is not ignorance.

It may be the tragedy of the person who knows.

He does not need someone to teach him a new truth. He needs the old truth to descend from his head to the place where decisions are made.

And now we reach Shabbat Shuvah. Most people sitting in synagogue are not hearing for the first time that teshuvah exists. They have heard hundreds of sermons. They know they must repair. They know the confession. They know Yom Kippur is approaching. Some of us have already lived through forty, fifty, or sixty Yom Kippurs.

So perhaps this year’s question is not: what else do I need to know?

It is: what is one thing I already know that it is time to start living?

There is a great difference between knowledge and realization.

A person knows time passes. But sometimes he sits at the brit milah of a grandchild, watches his son holding a baby, and suddenly he does not merely know that time passes. He feels it.

A person knows parents are precious. But sometimes only when one of them becomes weak does he realize how many things he postponed.

A person knows home is more important than work. But sometimes only when something at home cracks does he discover how much energy he gave outside and how little remained inside.

What changed? Not the information.

The information was there before.

It simply became reality.

And perhaps that is one of the functions of a sermon. A good sermon does not necessarily have to teach a person something he has never heard. Sometimes its role is to take something he has known for thirty years and make him hear it as though for the first time.

The shofar works that way too. Maimonides writes that the sound of the shofar hints: “Awake, sleepers, from your sleep, and you who slumber, arise from your slumber” (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuvah 3:4). The shofar does not deliver information. It contains no new sentence that we did not know.

It wakes us up.

There are things whose problem is not that we do not know them. We fell asleep beside them.

And this may explain a phenomenon we all know. A person can leave a sermon deeply moved, say, “That was exactly for me,” and two days later everything returns to its place.

Why?

Because emotion is not necessarily change.

A person heard a truth. It touched him. But if it did not receive a practical form, ordinary life is stronger than it.

The Sages say in the Mishnah: “Study is not the main thing, but action” (Avot 1:17). This is not a dismissal of study. The opposite. If study were not meant to reach action, why would it be so important? Its great value lies in its ability to move a person.

So perhaps we make a mistake with resolutions during the Ten Days of Repentance. We hear a lot, become very inspired, and take on things that are too large. A person says: this year I am changing my entire prayer, my entire learning, all of my anger, my entire home.

Two weeks later he discovers that he is still the same person.

Perhaps we should work in the opposite direction.

Do not take ten new truths.

Take one old truth and stop merely knowing it.

If you have known for years that your anger harms your home, do not read another article about anger today. Decide what you will do the next time anger rises.

If you know the phone steals time from your children, do not say again, “I need to use the phone less.” Set one hour in which it will not be in your hand.

If you know you want to learn every day, do not say, “This year I will learn more.” Set a time and a place.

If you know there is someone you must ask forgiveness from, do not add another explanation. Pick up the phone.

Because as long as truth remains general, it can coexist peacefully with a life that contradicts it.

A person can believe very strongly in the importance of family and at the same time not be at home.

He can believe deeply in the importance of Torah without opening a book.

He can believe in the severity of lashon hara and continue speaking.

He can believe that teshuvah must be done and continue postponing it.

There is no contradiction in the head.

The contradiction is in life.

And this may be what Moses is saying in the words “foolish people and unwise.” The problem is not that you lack intelligence. The problem is that you are not using wisdom to see the outcome of the path.

Rashi says: “to understand what will result.”

Look ahead for a moment.

If I continue speaking this way at home for another five years, what will the home look like?

If I continue postponing learning for another five years, where will I be?

If I continue telling my child “later,” how many “laters” are left before he no longer asks?

If I keep giving work my best hours and important things the leftovers, what will remain?

This is not prophecy.

This is wisdom.

A wise person is not only someone who knows a lot about life. A wise person allows what he knows about life to change the way he lives it.

This takes on special meaning before Yom Kippur. We are about to say: “We have sinned, we have betrayed, we have robbed, we have spoken slander.” But there is another confession that is not written in the prayer book, and perhaps each person needs to say it to himself: Master of the Universe, how many things did I know this year and still fail to live by?

I knew time was precious, and I wasted it.

I knew my words could wound, and I said them.

I knew someone needed me, and I was unavailable.

I knew what was right, but once again chose what was comfortable.

This is a deep confession, because it does not allow us to hide behind “I didn’t know.”

But that is also where hope lies.

If the problem were that I do not know, I would need to begin a long journey of learning. But if I already know, sometimes the distance between where I am and the beginning of change is one decision.

One truth already inside me is waiting for me to stop postponing it.

So I would suggest that before Yom Kippur every person choose one sentence he has been saying for years.

A sentence he truly believes.

“My family comes first.”

“Torah is my life.”

“I may not speak that way.”

“I need time for prayer.”

“I need to ask forgiveness.”

“My time is precious.”

Then ask: if I really believe this sentence, what needs to change tomorrow morning?

Not in a year.

Tomorrow.

If there is no practical answer, perhaps the sentence is still only in the head.

And this brings us back to the man at the doctor. He knew all the instructions. He could even lecture others about them. But his body told a different story.

The doctor did not need to give him more knowledge.

He needed to help him turn knowledge into behavior.

Perhaps we too arrive at Shabbat Shuvah with a huge storehouse of knowledge. We know verses, sayings of the Sages, laws, sermons, and stories.

And the Holy One, blessed be He, does not ask only how much we knew.

He asks what of all this entered life.

Moses does not say, “a people who do not know.”

He says: “and unwise.”

Because a person can know and still not be wise.

He can understand and not change.

He can be moved and not act.

And he can pass through another Yom Kippur, hear another Kol Nidrei, say another confession, shed another tear, and return home with exactly the same knowledge and exactly the same life.

Perhaps this year we do not need to look for something new.

Perhaps we need to take one thing we have known for years, place it before our eyes, and say:

Until today I knew this. From now on I want to begin living it.

Because in the end, a person is not measured only by the truths he can say.

He is measured by the truths that received an address inside his life.

And Shabbat Shuvah asks us one question that cannot be answered by one more class:

If you already know what is right, what else has to happen before you start doing it?