Post-Zoom Reflections

I was speaking with someone yesterday about the interesting observation that when 2 people are dating and 1 is interested, but the other isn’t, it’s difficult for the interested person to not feel rejected/hurt/angry and take it very personally. This is the case even though, in reality, it’s not a reflection on their value as a person at all that someone else thinks they are not what they are personally looking for in a spouse (which includes subjective, emotional factors).

I’ve thought about this many times in the past. But, yesterday, it took on a new kind of significance. This was because I immediately connected this case with the zoom I did recently. My “adversity” example in the zoom had been my apartment flooding. I was able to make the powerful connection today in the moment of seeing the commonality between the cases of the date and the flood. I was able to see that just as my apartment flooding is not a personal attack in the least, but rather an expression of a lawful system(, which includes rain, wind, and physical and chemical properties of various objects) , so too, one person not finding another compatible just “is”. There’s nothing “bad” or personal about it.

Upon further reflection, I was able to even take this a step further. This lawful system which includes rain, wind, etc. is not just neutral and what “is”. Rather, it is actually good. It is beautiful and perfectly worked out to sustain life on Earth. So too, the dating scenario is not just neutral. It is actually good. It is also an expression of certain lawful principles of how man was created with a body and psyche of a kind that helps him to survive, perpetuate the species, and develop as a mind.

As I mentioned yesterday before shiur, this is very different from the experience of the benefit of just “breaking down” a particular distortion. The experience of holding onto the “cosmic perspective” and bringing some of it into my dalet amos in the zoom brought a very interesting added dimension to the whole thing and allowed me to move beyond the insight I’d had about the dating scenario in the past and take it to another level.