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DEFINING LOVE
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By nature, most people find it difficult to describe their emotions and explain them to others.

It is often said that love cannot be defined with words; to be understood, it must be experienced. It is difficult to reduce a feeling to a string of words. By nature, most people find it difficult to describe their emotions and explain them to others. 

Love can distract a person from his ordinary routine and keep him from thinking of anything else. When a person states “I love so and so,” he expresses a feeling which he experiences. He means to say that he delights in that person's company and enjoys giving to him. The source of the person's pleasure is the bond between him and the individual he loves.

For most people, the drive to find food is a compulsive pleasure. It is far stronger than, say, the impulse to seek out pleasant scenery. This is how the Creator fashioned Man, because eating keeps Man alive, whereas enjoying a panoramic view is not essential to man's continued existence. 

In general, Man experiences the greatest pleasure when filling those basic needs which are most essential to human life.

Similarly, the Creator fashioned man in such a way that he feel pleasure in marriage.  Were it not for the strong attractive force between the sexes, the human species would long ago have become extinct. Marriage restricts a person's independence; were it not for the attraction between man and women, no person would agree to assume the “shackles” of marriage and establish a family.

Love is one of the many pleasures of life in this world. The pleasure of a good marriage cements the bond between husband and wife. Let us examine the nature and role of this pleasure more closely. 

When the Creator wanted to form a bond between Man and his environment, He introduced various sources of pleasure to man's environment. At the same time, He equipped Man with whatever form of receptor he would require in order to become aware of the pleasure he was meant to enjoy. Heaven implanted in mankind a craving for both physical and spiritual pleasures so that there might be a bond between the source of pleasure and the one who experiences it.

Let us look at a few examples:

Heaven wants the human race to survive. To this end, G-d designed man with taste buds and a sense of smell so that he derive pleasure from eating, and keep himself alive in the process. This is the reason that we enjoy our food more when we are hungry and truly have a physical need for nourishment. 

This being so, we conclude that the purpose of our eating is not to enjoy the taste of our food, but, rather, it is because we have a basic need to consume food that G-d equipped our bodies with the sensory perception required to enjoy what we put into our mouths. Likewise, He created an immense range of food sources that are structured to convey the pleasures of taste and aroma when consumed. 

Often, people erroneously assume that the pleasure inherent in having a meal is the purpose of our consumption of food. Such an approach can be likened to the case of little Danny who is a poor eater: Mother tops his yogurt with chocolate sauce in an effort to get him to put some food into his mouth. Danny assumes that his mother is offering him yogurt so than she can serve him chocolate sauce. His mother's motivation is just the opposite; she buys the chocolate sauce only as a means of getting something nourishing into her underweight child. Likewise, Mary Jane is sure that her mother spreads the white cheese on her crackers so that the chocolate sprinkles won't fall off onto her plate.  


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