Are You Missing Out on Life's True Joys?

"I feel like Yael is always avoiding me. I try to get closer, make so many gestures and efforts for her, and she just pulls away," Michal complained.

There was a long silence in the room, then Yael responded: "I feel that behind all those efforts, Michal has expectations and interests in getting something in return from me. Our relationship is not a business transaction; it’s a partnership!".

"I don’t understand, what’s with this pretense? What interests you are shopping, meeting with your friends, and gossiping about the world. Suddenly when you need something, you remember me?" Michal replied angrily.

"Michal, your anger is understandable and justified. You feel exploited, and it really is a hard feeling. But your anger isn't about feeling exploited; it's that she's not willing to let you exploit her back."

"If she didn't reject me and pull away, I wouldn't feel exploited," Michal answered.

"In business, mutual exploitation is even the essence of business. In relationships, mutual exploitation leads to destruction. But there is a deeper problem that significantly affects the foundations of the relationship."

"Foundations?" Yael asked.

"Let’s take a journey back in time, to the era of our patriarch Abraham. The prevailing culture back then was one of idol worship. Each person had several idols that fulfilled very functional needs. There was a statue related to food, a statue related to shelter, a statue related to wealth, and so on… When I needed something, I would buy a statue based on my need and worship it until I got what I wanted.

"The covenant that Hashem made with Abraham was to shatter all idol worship. This dispersion, where a person creates a functional idol based on their need and begins to work it, produces a spiritual movement opposite to the movement Hashem desires from us. In a spiritual connection with Hashem, Abraham’s focused relationship with Hashem is the main thing, not what he gets from that connection."

"And how does this relate to our relationship?" Michal asked suspiciously.

"Let's try to understand how it relates to your relationship with yourself. The essence of fixing the core of your soul is to shatter all the idols."

"What do you mean by idols?" Yael asked.

"All the material and spiritual things you chase after nonstop, trying to derive existential value from them…".

"What do you mean by existential value?" Michal asked.

"Everything you exert effort and invest so many resources for, feeling an internal need you can't live without, that gives you meaning, fills you up – and Hashem is not part of that picture, that is idol worship."

"When you stop dispersing your mental energies, you can become a channel that receives and transmits abundance, and there is flow in the relationship."

"This way, Michal, you can give and offer to Yael without expecting anything in return, just for the sake of giving," I explained.

"How can I give without expecting something to happen? It feels pointless, even scary," Michal said.

"What does that fear make you feel?" I asked.

"I feel a huge emptiness. I also feel like it’s ingrained in me, that’s what I know, and I'm not familiar with any other worldview," he continued.

"Unfortunately, in the modern world, the damage to the foundations has received cultural validation and acceptance. As if someone gave a 'kashrut' stamp to miss out on life, to miss out on the true goals."

"What do you mean?" Yael asked curiously.

"What is common today is that we focus on the means by which we are supposed to achieve the goals, and we turn them into goals. Because there are many means to reach the goal, we become scattered with many kinds of means, which ultimately shatter our souls and break us, because they cannot truly satisfy our desires or lead us to the real goal."

"Can you explain this?" Yael asked.

"I'll give a few examples, and I believe it will be clear: I buy a house to raise children in it, to educate them and give them warmth, love, and attention. If, in the end, 90% of my free time is spent on renovations, cleaning, and organizing the house, and I have no time left for the kids – I am missing the goal.

"If I decided to develop a career because I want to have money to bring home to build a house, and instead, I spend the majority of my time working and earning far more than the house really needs, and I don't even get home to build and grow from the house, then I have missed the goal."

"Hashem gave us desires (means) accompanied by pleasure, to motivate us to exert effort and achieve connections, bonds, marriage, childbirth, eating, etc.… This is the law that Hashem instilled in the world. The desire for pleasure is a means to achieve the goal. That hunger and pleasure associated with food is meant for a person to work very hard, plant, water, harvest, and cook, and in the end, nourish themselves and not die of hunger. But it’s not the food that’s the main thing."

"Tell me, Yael, how does the world perceive food?" I asked.

"People are mainly preoccupied with the food itself and eat much more than they need," she replied.

"And that leads to developing diseases and causes the body to miss the goal of pleasure derived from hunger. The work we need to do is a root work, where we develop the ability to restore the means to its natural place as a tool to achieve the goal.

"When pleasure becomes the goal and is no longer the means, we fill our souls with something that doesn’t really fulfill them, and we only increase the void and feeling of emptiness.

"What is your purpose? Why are you together?" I asked.

"We want a good relationship," Yael answered.

"So if the goal is the connection and pleasure is a means, then we need to set very clear boundaries for pleasure so that it is expressed in the right place and in the right way, thus serving the goal.

"When desires become a person’s goal, the desire loses boundaries and becomes an idol that enslaves the person and generates endless dependency. That pleasure that should be a driving force becomes an existential distress that haunts the person. You need to constantly realign yourselves with your goal, connect yourselves to the crown. Otherwise, you roll through this relationship aimlessly, with many imaginary idols you hope will provide you with pleasure, which unfortunately guide you repeatedly down dead-end paths. A proper connection to the purpose of the relationship and its real significance will allow you to use that engine of pleasure correctly."

"So what? Should I deprive myself of all these pleasures?" Michal asked.

"Of course not. Avoidance is the other side of the same idol worship coin. Any engagement with means, whether you yield to it or avoid it, is preservation of idol worship and loss of purpose. The right way is to elevate that strong energy of pleasure and reconnect to the purpose. This will cause all your mental faculties to be distributed correctly among the parts of the soul, in a way that serves the true essence and connects you to the truth within the soul.

"This way, you will build a balanced relationship that is rectified from the ground up, and you will be able to experience and feel fullness and a right connection to life and the marital bond."

Hanna Dayan [email protected]

For all columns and to get in touch, click here