It is well-known that with each good deed that one performs the reward is in direct proportion to the amount of difficulty in the performance thereof. The same is true of happiness in that a person who by nature and because of his life experiences is an unhappy and depressed person, if when he is occupied with the holy Torah, with prayers, with blessings and other commandments, or even just on Shabbos he manages to empty his mind of all of his worries, forget his sadness and anger and instead rejoices with Hashem, such a person will have far more reward than a person who is anyway quiet and relaxed. When a Jewish person is rejoicing in the service of Hashem, he should imagine to himself that he has gained a profit of one million gold coins, in which case with this great happiness he will forget completely about the one small coin that he has lost. the distance between the happiness of serving Hashem and all of the things which happen to a person in this world is even greater than this. Even when we are discussing those things about which one is obligated to be sad and mourn such as the destruction of the holy temple and one’s sins, this does not apply all the time. Instead, one must know that the time for happiness and the time for sadness are completely separate and when being happy no strange thing should interfere.
