For I will at this time send all my plagues upon your heart. (Shemos 9:14)

Some of the biggest battles we fight, are our internal struggles. Our emotions push us in one direction and our intelligence drives us in another. Sometimes, our habits are so ingrained that they seemingly force us to do the opposite of what we know to be right.

I had such an experience once back in ’78 when I was in a special theater with the movie projected 360° around the room. This totally immersed the audience, giving them a feeling as if they were in the center of the activity. The audience stood in the center of the room, and there were bars in front of them so that they could hold on to stabilize themselves. As the experience began, people were feeling as if they were riding on highways or gliding in the sky; if you watched the audience instead of the screens, you would see people leaning to this side or that side in response to the visuals. The grand finale was a ride on a fire truck: As the truck was racing through the city streets towards a fire, a small child crossed into the street in front of the truck; the driver slammed on the brakes, causing the truck to come to a screeching halt. In the theater, about a third of the people fell to the floor! They may have felt sillier than the others, but all of us in the room experienced some sort of jolt even though we knew it was not real. This taught me that I wasn’t as in control of myself as I thought I was.

Chazal tell us that people who continually make a mistake and sin can get to the point that it becomes so habitual they can even feel that they have no control over those actions. Yet, we are taught that we will be held accountable, for we allowed ourselves to be “trained” in a way which made those actions become “natural.” On this the Rambam in Hilchos Teshuva (6:3) writes that there can be situations where a person will commit sins that are beyond his control, and yet he will be punished for them.

This idea is seen through Hashem’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, giving him no further free choice.  Yet, Pharaoh was still punished for his obstinacy, despite his lack of free will. There are those who explain the verse “I am sending my plagues upon your heart…” as an indicator that this particular plague was the beginning of the ones in which Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, thereby not giving him a choice. Besides the damage caused by the plague itself, Pharaoh was punished with a hardened heart.

There are times in our lives when our head tells us to do one thing and our habits lead us to do something else. We laugh at “Pharaoh in pajamas in the middle of the night,” yet we ourselves may fall into this same pattern. I was once at a talk from Rav Shlomo Brevda ZT”L. Rav Brevda challenged those in attendance with the following: Whoever can daven an entire Shemonei Esrei without looking up from their siddur even once, I will give them $100. Not one person in the crowd accepted the challenge. Rav Brevda said that it isn’t anyone’s fault that they can’t daven this way, we have become so habituated to looking around, we are no longer fully in control of how we act when we daven. He also said that we do have the ability to change ourselves to focus more on our davening – we just can’t change all at once.

As we read the parshios of the weeks of Shovevim (parshas Shemos through parshas Mishpatim), one of the main lessons we are supposed to learn is to stop and think before we act. In Egypt the Jews fell into a slave mentality, eventually becoming acclimated to their situation, and as they became more comfortable with their new status, they even stopped thinking about what it would really mean to be a free person.

Hashem should help us to pause and think about what and who we really can be and not be satisfied with what and where we are right now.