What is love?

Yichidus
Mrs Chana Sharfstein
In her early twenties in 1954

One time when I went into Yechidus, the Rebbe started asking me about Shidduchim.
I was dating, and I just answered: Yes, I was meeting people.
Then the Rebbe started asking me about different boys.
I thought to myself that is strange, all the boys that the Rebbe asked me about, I had gone out with them.

I answered about each one, that although they were nice boys, I had my reasons for not marrying them.
The Rebbe then said to me: I know that you like to read.
I said: oh yes I do.
He said: and what kind of books do you prefer reading.
I said that I loved to read novels.
The Rebbe said, that: Novels are fiction, and fiction is make believe, it is not real.
So what you read in a novel, is not what happens in real life.
In a novel, people meet and there is this big blinding storm of passion. That is not what real love is all about.

Two people can meet, and there can be a thread of understanding. It is like a tiny little flame.
And as these people merge their lives together, and decide to build a home, and raise a family. Through the everyday activities of life, through caring and sharing, through commitment to each other, going through the daily tribulations of life; this little flame then grows ever brighter, into a much bigger flame.

Until these two people, who started out as strangers, have through life become intertwined to such an extent, that neither one of them can think of life, without the other.

This is what true love is all about. It is small acts, that you do on a daily basis, that make you become, instead of you and I, us.