Love: The Purest Expression of the Soul
What is love? Love, one of our most-oft-used words, remains and enigma. There may have been more written about love than about any other subject, yet it remains intangible. We know that love is an integral part of human life, that we need for our well-being, but there is no guaranteed way to find it. So what is love?
Love is the single most necessary component in human life. It is both giving and receiving; it allows us to experience another person and lets that person experience us. Love is the origin and foundation of all human interaction. To live a meaningful life, we must learn more about love and how to bring it into our lives.
At first glance, we might think that we need love in the same way that we need to eat and drink, to breathe and sleep. We know that love fulfills our need to be cared for, our need for intimacy. So we pursue love in a manner that is often narcissistic and indulgent-we look for someone who will love us because we crave it; we may want to love someone so we can feel good about ourselves.
But if love is just another need like food and water, why is it so elusive? Why is attaining love difficult for so many people? And when we do find it, it doesn’t come easily, it always comes with some pain and frustration. We may succeed at love for a time, but when we fail the pain is intense.
These are the obstacles we face when we look at love as just another of our bodily needs. Yes, we do need love just as we need food and water, but there is a difference. Food ad water are elements of the earth that sustain our physical bodies, whereas love is the language of G-d, which sustains our soul.
True love bears little resemblance to the love we read about in novels and hear about in songs. True love is transcendence, linking our physical selves to G-d and, therefore, to everyone else around us. All too often we look at love selfishly, as something we want and need; but true love, because it is integral to our relationship with G-d, is selfless.
One of our most fundamental principles is love your neighbor as yourself”. How can this be possible-don’t wee love ourselves more than we love anything else? The answer lies in the fact that true, selfless love stems not from the body, but from the soul. Love is the dominance of spirit over matter. By the definition of materialism, two objects cannot occupy the same space simultaneously. But the soul transcends time and space, and it also transcends narcissism, making it possible to truly share yourself with another person.
The sage Hillel says, “Do not do unto others that which you do not want done unto yourself. This is the entire Torah and the rest is commentary”. The wisdom of G-d is intended to do one thing: to teach us how to love, to transcend our material boundaries and reach more spiritual place. Such a journey is only made through the soul. And love is the language that we must learn to speak along the way. Love is a way of talking to G-d. When you look into someone’s eyes and love that person, you are transcending the physical world and connecting to G-d.
So love is much more than treating another person with compassion. It goes beyond exchanging feelings of warmth. It is much more than doing to others only as you would do unto yourself. Love is a G-dly act, the purest way to feed another person’s soul as well as your own.
The deepest love is not merely human. It is love infused with G-dliness, whereby a mortal kiss is transformed into an immortal one. True love is one soul greeting another.
(The wisdom of the Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson in his book “Toward a Meaningful Life)
