When a Person Strays from the Path…

Sometimes a person’s soul does not merely go astray — it seems to dim, as if someone had blown out its inner light.
In the ancient language, the word “went astray” can be read in a way that means something else as well: “became foolish.”
Why? Because every sin is not just a weakness of the body but a loss of clarity.
As the Talmud says:
“A person does not sin unless a spirit of folly enters him.”
Folly is when you forget the price. When you lose the ability to see the difference between the temporary and the eternal.

Imagine, says Rav Yaakov Kanievsky, that the whole world, from the earth to the very stars, is filled with the finest sand. A single sack holds millions of such grains. And once every million years, just one grain disappears.
Well then: even the time it would take for all that sand to disappear is only a spark flickering in the boundlessness of eternity.

Yet a person trades eternity for a tiny spark of pleasure. He sells gold for a shard of glass. He stakes his soul — for a moment that vanishes faster than a breath.

And what does he get in return?
Pain. A broken body. An exhausted soul. An illusion of happiness with emptiness behind it.

Rabbeinu Yonah says: a person who realizes that he has sinned should tell himself plainly:
“I did not spare my body — for what? For a minute. I was cruel to my soul — for a moment. I traded the infinite for the perishable.”

We repeat this in the prayer of repentance as well: “And it was not worth it for us.”
Exactly: it was not worth it. It bore no fruit.
No benefit, no joy. Only scars on the body and on the heart.

King Shlomo, the wisest of men, said:
“Better a poor but wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knows how to take heed.”
The youth is the pure, good inclination in a person. It arrives when the soul comes of age, at 13.
Why poor? Because its voice is quiet. It is seldom listened to.
But it leads to truth. It is a lamp that burns even in the night.

And the “old and foolish king” is the passionate, evil inclination.
It is with us from birth. It speaks loudly. It is always first.
And so it is like a villain in court who runs in before everyone else and lies convincingly, until you no longer want to hear the truth.

The Zohar says: it is like Achashverosh, who reigned “from India to Ethiopia” — from the beginning of life to its end.
This “kingdom” is a deception. It captures a person’s soul with bribes: promises of pleasure, power, success.
But look closely, and there is not a single real stone there.
Only dust, only smoke.

A young man who had strayed from the path wrote to me:
“People thought I was happy. But I was empty. Joy was far from me.”

And here is the truth: the evil inclination sounds so convincing because we have been listening to it since birth. We grow used to its voice — and forget that there is another.
It lies. It paints an illusory world in which sin is the path to pleasure.
But behind every mask there is suffering. Behind every smile, an inner crack.

That is why a person who strives toward the light must not let go of wisdom.
Not even for a moment.
Let it be his mirror, his voice, his map.
Let it remind him: everything you lose for the sake of sin is not worth the eternity you carry within you.