When Searching Keeps You from Choosing

The Torah says: “It is not good for man to be alone.” We all know these words. But there is a question that hurts quietly. What about someone who is alone not because he forgot, but because he is searching? He goes out every week. He hears names. He meets people. He does not hold back. And still, a faithful home is not being built. The truth is that there is a kind of loneliness that wears the costume of effort. A person wakes up in the morning and feels that he is “doing something.” There is a new name, a new description, a new hope. Even when he says “no,” he still feels that he is trying. And that feeling itself is the danger. The World of Imagination and the World of Reality As long as “maybe tomorrow the right one will show up,” there is no need to choose today. Endless searching is the cleverest way to stay alone without feeling that it is your choice. What drives this searching? Imagination. In a person’s mind there is a picture. It is detailed, polished and perfect in every way. Every real person he meets is compared to that picture. In that comparison, the real person will always lose. That is because the imagined picture is not a person. It is something the mind has built up over years of waiting. It does not breathe. It does not get tired. It never disappoints, because it does not exist. This is what our Sages meant when they said: “Finding a person’s match is as hard as the splitting of the Red Sea.” Many people have heard these words and wondered why finding a match is compared to a miracle. We can suggest an answer. The splitting that is needed is not outside. It is inside. A person has built a sea of fantasies around himself. That sea has to split, so that he can walk on the dry land of reality. A world with no choosing, only endless possibilities, is a world of chaos. In the language of Jewish mysticism, it is light without vessels to hold it. Every new name that comes along is one more light. But without a vessel to receive it, the light does not stay. It just passes on. Choosing as an Act of Setting the Self Aside This is the point we need to understand well, because it is easy to misunderstand. Choosing a real person is not giving up. Giving up is a step down: “I didn’t find what I wanted, so I’ll take less.” The choice we are talking about is something completely different. It is an act of surrender. Imagination surrenders to reality. The “me” who imagines surrenders to the real way Hashem is guiding his life. The Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, explains that a person who has not set his ego aside is not a vessel that can receive Hashem’s blessing. “We have nothing of our own.” When a person holds on to his imagined picture as if it were “his,” as if it were the only measure of what is right, he closes himself off from what Hashem wants to give him. So choosing is inner work of setting something aside. You are not setting aside the person in front of you. You are setting aside the picture in your head. When a person lets go of the picture, he becomes a vessel. And a vessel is able to receive. In our case, this is the simple meaning of the words the Jewish people said: “We will do, and we will understand.” The doing came before the understanding. First you choose, and afterward you understand why it is right. The demand to understand everything first and only then to choose is the very demand that leaves you frozen. The King in the Field Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, gives a well-known parable in his teachings for the month before the High Holidays. The king leaves his palace and passes through the field. There, everyone can come up to him. He is open to every single person. Afterward he goes back to the palace, and then it is hard to reach him. The King is not in the imaginary palace you have built in your head. He is in the field. He is in the person standing in front of you right now. He is in the way Hashem guides every detail, and that guidance brought this person here, to this meeting, at this moment. You are waiting for the palace. But the King is already in the field.