The Doctor's Advice

It is told that shortly before Rav Meir Dan's passing, an expert physician, one of the great doctors of Poland, stood at his bedside. The doctor told him that if he poured all his desire into one particular matter and drew the greatest possible pleasure from it, that would awaken strength within him to fight the illness, and he might overcome it.

When the doctor had gone, Rav Meir Dan said that he had been fortunate to be counted among the rabbanim learned enough to deal with the gravest and most complex questions. If he invested all his strength in that, he would surely take great pleasure from it and be strengthened. But it would not be true strength, he said. It would be pride, conceit and ego, and it is better to die than to fall into the morass of pride.