פרק ב הלכה ד. מדרכי התשובה להיות השב צועק תמיד לפני השם בבכי ותחנונים ועושה צדקה כפי כוחו ומתרחק הרבה מן הדבר שחטא בו ומשנה שמו כלומר שאני אחר ואיני אותו האיש שעשה אותן המעשים ומשנה מעשיו כולם לטובה ולדרך ישרה וגולה ממקומו.
Says, as the Nosei Keilim explain, that the Rambam crafted this halacha primarily from the Gemara Rosh Hashanah of ארבעה דברים מקרעין גזר דינו של אדם צדקה צעקה שינוי השם שינוי מעשה ויש אומרים אף שינוי מקום.
The Rambam, unlike Rashi, clearly says that shinuy ma'aseh, contextually, it's clear that it means something above and beyond just desisting from the aveira because just as tza'aka and tzedaka is something additional besides azivas hachet, so too shinuy ma'aseh must be something additional. So what does it mean? So the Rambam raises the bar rather high: משנה מעשיו כולם לטובה. Wow. So what does the Rambam mean by that halacha l'ma'aseh? And I don't know, how does one even aspire to implementing that? So let's leave that for a moment. If you go back to the beginning of Hilchos De'os, the Rambam thinks of the field of human behavior and activity differently than we do. We operate with certain divisions such as there are areas which ethics determines. So one's bein adam l'chavero is a question of ethics. One's eating habits, I don't think we would say that that's ethical, maybe that's I don't know, that's bein adam l'atzmo, we would clearly distinguish that. That's a different realm. We would talk about on the one hand emotions, on the one hand desires, on the one hand urges. Rambam doesn't have any of these differentiations here in Hilchos De'os. He doesn't have any of these distinctions. The mida beinonis applies equally to what we would call emotions in terms of controlling anger, the same way it does in terms of the self-discipline in one's eating habits. So the Rambam doesn't have any of these distinctions. They're all governed by the mida beinonis. Ad kedey kach that there isn't an area of life which isn't governed by the mida beinonis. If you go through the Rambam's list, so how much a person eats, what a person eats, how much a person works, how much he looks to earn in his job, how he greets people, whether he greets people nicely with a warm countenance, how he gives tzedaka, everything is governed by the mida beinonis. The Rambam describes when he says at the extremes, he says that the einan derech tova. The extremes are einan derech tova. A person should go בדרך הטובה והיא הדרך הישרה and the והיא הדרך הישרה היא מדה בינונית שבכל דעה ודעה מכל דעות שיש לו לאדם.
And then the Rambam recapitulates and he says at the end of halacha hey in perek alef of Hilchos De'os ומצווים אנו ללכת בדרכים האלו הבינונים והם הדרכים הטובים והישרים.
So the Rambam refers to the mida beinonis as tov ve'yashar. Now, just with the reminder that the Rambam intended that we learn Mishneh Torah consecutively, not that we sort of parachute in with the Ein Mishpat, but that we learn consecutively. So lachora the Rambam intends that the association we're supposed to have in learning פרק ב הלכה ד כאן משנה מעשיו כולם לטובה ולדרך ישרה,
so on the one hand the bar is... set very very high, but on the other hand there's really only one mitzvah that a person has to keep his eye on. That he's not juggling, it's not that he's juggling 613 balls. No, there's only one ball that he has to keep his eye on, משנה מעשיו כולם לטובה ולדרך ישרה. It's if the person will be more nizhar on correctly implementing the vehalachta bidrachav, it will be משנה מעשיו כולם לטובה.