(Rabbi Eliezer) said to them: Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet and send portions unto him for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is sacred unto our Lord: neither be ye grieved; for the joy of Hashem is your security (Nehemiah 8:10). The Master said: They forsake eternal life and occupy themselves with temporary needs.…. R’ Eliezer said: Rejoicing on the Festival is optional… R. Joshua says: Divide it, half of it for the Lord, and half of it for yourselves.

The Vilna Goan explains that Yom Kippur and Purim are exceptions to the rule of Rabbi Joshua yet each one provides what the other one lacks. Yom Kippur is lacking in personal enjoyment and Purim is lacking in rigor and austerity but together they complete each other.

The Gemara in Shabbos 88a states: Moses brought the people out toward G-d from the camp, and they stood at the bottom of the mountain (Shemos 19:17). Rabbi Abdimi ben Hama ben Hasa said: This teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, overturned the mountain upon them like an inverted cask, and said to them, 'If ye accept the Torah, it is well; if not, there shall be your burial.’

Rabbi Aha ben Jacob observed: This furnishes a strong protest against the Torah (because we were forced to accept it). Said Raba, yet even so, they re-accepted it in the days of Ahasuerus, for it is written, “the Jews ordained and took upon themselves and upon their seed and upon all those who join them, that it should not be revoked to make these two days according to their script and according to their appointed time, every year” (Ester 9:27). They confirmed what they had accepted long before.

Chazal tells us that on Purim the Jews accepted the Torah absolutely and with a full and willing heart saying, “first we do and then we will understand.”

The Rosh Yeshiva Rav Huntner z’l points out that the both on Yom Kippur and on Purim we are focused on accepting new commitments upon ourselves. On Yom Kippur we feel tremendous regret and we obligate ourselves to change for the better, but on Purim, even though we totally recommit ourselves to the Torah and its mitzvos we have no regret for the past. Why?

The Rambam in Hilchos Teshuva 2:4 states: Among the paths of repentance is for the penitent to … change his name, as if to say, “I am a different person and not the same one who sinned etc."

On Yom Kippur we hope to load ourselves with so much regret that we can honestly say “I am a new and different person and not that disgusting one who did those horrible sins. But on Purim we hope to fill ourselves with so much joy that we can honestly say, “Yes! That was me! I am the one who accepted the Torah, willingly and totally and I was not forced at all! I am so filled with love and happiness for Hashem that I am thrilled and ecstatic to fulfill every letter of the Torah!

On Yom Kippur we renew ourselves by regretting who we were, but on Purim we renew ourselves by rejoicing in who we are. Gevalt!

Application:
This Purim, what can you do to contact and revitalize your true self?

Give 10 quick answers to the following sentence stems:
When I feel positive, I realize …
The good deep inside of me wants to …

Have a great Purim Seudah!

Strange, I always thought Purim was about NOT being yourself.

Excellent point and humorous.

1. The reason why we dress in costumes on Purim is because this was the first time we were allowed to fight Amalik under a non-Jewish king. So we take on some of the celebrating on the non-Jews.

2. On a drush level I would answer you that the Ramchal explains that one's understanding of something is not complete until one understands "the thing and its opposite". So in order to truly understand who you are you need to understand who your not.

My rabbi said that on Purim is a great time to ask a rabbi for a bracha... with less inhibition more truth is visible... perhaps one has to be ready for the truth as well given what Pirkei Avos says about likening words to glowing coals...

I understood that on Purim how we act when less inhibitted actually reveals more about ourselves to those who see us.

Hypnotists like to assuage concerns that under hypnosis noone can be made to do something they don't already want to do. If there were a hypnotist entertainer that takes someone from the audience and asks them to run around stage clucking like a chicken it is something they were willing to do, not something they were convinced them to do against their will.

I think we have this same concept by Pharoah... Hashem hardened his heart. Hashem helped Pharoah along the path of mean-ness which Pharoah wanted, but without help might have lost his resolve since the plagues made Hashem's presence so obvious to all, such as Pharoah's advisers.

If Pharoah celebrated Purim, perhaps during the year he would act like a really tough and mean immortal, but on Purim he'd dress up like his true inner self, a warm compassionate king who, unlike Achashveirosh, would set aside his prior edicts in order to permit his daughter to adopt a Hebrew boy.

Achashveirosh seems to have acted like a confident king, who's prior orders were by definition perfect, and unchangable. However don't our commentaries explain that his true self was to be aware of his weaknesses? His lack of confidence was why he would not remove the decree against the Jewish people!