“And on that day G-d saved the Israelites from the hand of Egypt.”(Shemot 14:30)
The Ohr Hachayim comments that the Torah states that “on that day they were saved,”alluding to the day in which the Egyptians who were persecuting the Jews when they left Egypt, perished in the sea.
Even though they had been already liberated on the day they left Egypt, they were not really considered saved because they still felt insecure in regard to the Egyptians.
As they say “you can take the Jew out of Egypt but you can’t take Egypt out of the Jew.”
We see from this that even though in actuality a person is free, he is not really free unless he considers himself free. A person who worries and feels insecure is imprisoned even though he is not behind bars and no one will harm him.
To be truly free you must feel free. This is achieved by the control you exercise over your thoughts.
How many times we worry about the future and suffer because of it, then this worry never happens. This suffering will be the same as if you actually experienced some misfortune, but all that suffering is unnecessary.
Once Reb Mendel Futerfas, a famous Chabad Mashpia and storyteller, recounted a time when he was incarcerated in Siberia “It was hard and crushing work, but only physically, my soul was free. There was nothing holding me back. All my energy was focused on prayer and study.”
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