The Treasure Called Pleasure

We associate love with giving. Parents who love their children give to their children couples who love each other give to each other and friends who care show their caring by giving.
Giving is usually thought of as an active act of bestowal. You need something? I’ll give it to you. You’re hungry? Here’s some food. You have a problem? I’ll find a solution. But there is another type of giving at least as powerful as bestowing: receiving what the other has to give.
Receiving from someone addresses their most basic human need — to be G-d-like. We love to be a “bestower” like G-d to feel independent and capable the dispenser of bounty. Bestowing feels like the strongest expression of our Divine self. When we give we feel alive.
But if this is true of ourselves then it is true for others as well. It follows then the greatest gift one can give another person is to allow him to experience that wonderful G-d-like feeling of bestowing. By allowing someone to give to you you are giving him a chance to express his inner essence — which is his deepest desire.
Our need to give is so great that if we had to define a pathetic person a working definition would be: someone who wants to give but no one wants to receive from him. He wants to talk and no one wants to listen. He wants to sing and no one likes his voice. He wants to work and no one wants to hire him. The most meaningful gift we can give someone is offering them the opportunity to give to us.
In a pasuk that surprises us Hashem says “I remember the kindness of your youth… how you followed after Me into a wilderness to an untamed land” (Yirmiyahu 2:2). Kindness? Our going out of Egypt was a kindness to Hashem?! We were a desperate slave nation with no hope for the future — of course we followed Him! In what way was that a chesed to Hashem?
But by casting our receiving of Hashem’s overture as a chesed on our part this pasuk teaches us a crucial truth about our relationship with Hashem — and about relationships in general. Even if the bestower is full of bounty power and abundance he’s still vulnerable. He needs someone to need what he has to offer. With all the love in the world if the recipient doesn’t want to receive there won’t be a relationship. Even Hashem Whom we know has no needs — having created This World in order to give us the gift of relationship with Him — is as it were “dependent” on us. We needed to agree to the relationship. Paradoxically it’s the ‘needy’ receiver who holds the key to love and connection.

TAKING IS EASY
It is easy to take it’s hard to receive. Taking is the default setting of most of creation — we are natural takers. Receiving on the other hand is an art that needs to be cultivated and most of us find it very difficult.
That’s because taking is me-oriented. I take because in the final analysis I believe the whole world is mine. I may take by force or I may take with a smile but either way taking means that I view the giver as a dispensing machine. Taking does not acknowledge that there ever was a lack. It was mine anyway so I just took it.
Receiving on the other hand is about acknowledging that there was something I yearned for and you have given it to me. Thank you!
But who wants to admit that they are lacking? Me? I am an independent autonomous self-sufficient high-functioning person. I need nothing from anyone. In a society where we pride ourselves on pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps the idea of admitting that I’m not self-sufficient is terrifying. The “I can dress myself” of the two-year-old morphs into the “I’ve got it” of the adult. We constantly try to reframe our interactions to stress our independence and end up turning any potential act of relationship into an act of taking.
“He didn’t go out of his way. He had to go down that street anyway.”
“She’s getting paid for it. That’s her job.”
“She’s not doing it for me. That’s her personality. She loves doing these things anyway.”
We hate feeling vulnerable so we try not to need anyone. If we want something we’ll make sure to get it by the sweat of our own brow.
Yet lack — a desire for something not in my grasp — does not imply inferiority. Not only do we demonstrate our complexity when we lack — the simpler the organism the less it needs in order to survive — we open ourselves up to the vast beauty of the universe.
Desire is an opening up a willingness to experience life in all its glory to be surprised to have pleasure. Desire invites us to open up the iron gates of our carefully protected selves and welcome in the pleasure and beauty that exist outside of us. The defining features of desire are not pain and desperation but hope and anticipation. When we allow ourselves to desire we open ourselves to connection and love.

WHAT A PLEASURE!
“Revel in the pleasure of [your relationship with] Hashem” (Tehillim 37:4). The violinist has his bow perched above the strings and his deepest desire is to pour out a beautiful symphony but we have our hands over our ears and as long as we keep them there there is nothing the musician can do to give us pleasure. He can’t force us to enjoy.
But why would we put our hands over our ears when we claim that we love pleasure? Because enjoyment requires relinquishing control; the minute you try and control the symphony you are not enjoying you are orchestrating. We say no to pleasure again and again because we are so busy hanging on to the illusion that we are running the world that we can’t waste time enjoying.
We are so afraid of the vulnerability of being a receiver that we prefer not to enjoy because there’s no way we can be in control of what we receive. If I allow myself to desire what happens if I don’t like what I receive? What happens if I don’t get what I want? Better not to want anything.
The art of receiving refuses to become another tool in our control-freak box. When we are taking we can fake enjoyment in order to get the giver to give us what we want. But while we can sometimes get away with this with a child (Wow Shloimy you are my biggest helper!) rarely can we get away with this with an adult. The giver delights in giving not in being manipulated to do what we want. Pleasure — the ultimate expression of reception — by definition cannot have an agenda. Only the real thing cuts the deal.

NO TIME FOR PLEASURE?
Pleasure seems like an incongruous topic during the weeks leading up to Pesach and on the Yom Tov itself when many women feel like working machines. It really seems to us that if we relinquish control for one minute the entire edifice will come crashing down.
But while we may think that we need to keep doing giving producing and accomplishing in order to keep everything going it may be worthwhile to consider that keeping everything going might not be our job description.
A friend of mine who works at an extremely demanding job in addition to mothering a big family shared an interesting insight. Sometimes when she is feeling particularly overwhelmed her husband offers to make her a cup of coffee. Her initial reaction is always to say no (sometimes with a smile — and sometimes with a snarl). Going through her mind as she refuses are any number of thoughts such as “How can I let him make me a coffee? If I was a good wife I would be making him a coffee!” or “I am not going to let him buy me off with a coffee when there are so many things I asked him to do that he didn’t do ” or “He always spills the sugar all over the counter and all I need is something else to clean up ” etc.
Occasionally though she says yes sinks into the couch revels in the pleasure of that sweet hot drink — and surprisingly experiences a paradigm shift.
Suddenly she doesn’t feel a drive to charge back to her tasks like a general intent on conquering territory. After her brief moment of pleasurable reception reveling in every facet of that delicious drink prepared by her suddenly-cast-as-protective-and-loving husband she feels present and focused on her ultimate goal. And that goal funnily enough turns out not to be laundry or cooking or even serving dinner but strengthening the bonds of love between herself and her family and herself and Hashem.
Even if for many women being offered a cup of coffee might not be happening at this point in their lives it still might help to remember as we charge off on our mission to control the world — or at least the people who live in our house — that this might not be our job description.
“Revel in the pleasure of [your relationship with] Hashem — and He will fulfill your heart’s desires” (Tehillim 37:4). What is the connection between reveling in the pleasure of a relationship with Hashem and His fulfilling our desires? The answer stunning in its simplicity is if we let down our guard enough to enjoy — to revel in the relationship — we move out of control mode into vulnerable mode and open ourselves up to receive more. If you were a musician playing for an audience the more you sensed the audience’s enjoyment the greater would be your desire to play more and better. Pleasure admits to desire and desire creates an opening that makes room for brachah.