Mountain Range

As we acquire greater knowledge and understanding of life processes as a society, we learn about cause and effect relationships between various phenomena. With this knowledge, we start to understand various issues in terms of root causes that we can identify, address and remediate (i.e. a child’s behavior). This can be an empowering perspective and no doubt extremely useful. It can also be taken too far. It can lead us to believe that every problem must surely have an identifiable cause with an identifiable solution — including the challenge of shidduchim. And if a problem has a root cause, we need to find it and address it (whether practical, emotional, or spiritual), so that we can get married.

 

However, what often happens is that we either can’t seem to identify the thing, OR we find something and try to fix it but either can’t control it or don’t see the results we anticipated. This causes deep spiritual and emotional pain, a sense of betrayal or failure.

 

Of course introspection and self-development are a part of what gives life, and pain, meaning. However, the cause-effect relationship between our actions and outcomes is G-d’s illusion. Many, many times, we do not see the results we wanted or believed we would get.

 

I used to see shidduchim as an obstacle course. Or a board game 😉 . I kind of still like the board game analogy but I know it’s not that simple. Maybe shidduchim is the mountain range or the forest through which we travel. More of a context and less of a puzzle.