From Rabbi Pinto's talks: The great illusion of life

In his talks, Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto often addresses aspects of day-to-day life, including marital relationships, success and even business. At the end of the day, the same foundation is required for everything in order to succeed. One has to know how to read the map in a healthy and correct way and set expectations accordingly.

In one of his last talks, Rabbi Pinto referred to partnerships between friends and spouses, and the illusion that usually shatters relationships to pieces.

These are Rabbi Pinto's main points:

When a person meets a potential business partner or gets engaged, at first everything seems suitable and good, and one only sees 'a bowl of roses'. Then the couple gets closer to the wedding or the individuals get closer to a partnership, and day by day a person discovers things that he wasn’t aware of and doesn’t like. For instance, he finds that the other one’s excessive energy or indifference bothers him. There are many things like that.

It just takes one moment for what looked like a solid edifice to be torn apart, and what looked so promising to go down the drain. A person has to know this big principle for life: there is no such thing as the perfect couple or the perfect partnership. Every person has good things and other things that are not as good.

There is no such thing in the world that one completes the other in every way. It is an unrealistic and deceptive dream and illusion. A person has to decide what are the important principles, the main anchors in his life, which he believes will help him reach spiritual attainments.

When a person has such anchors, he will hold on to them and build on them love, friendship and perfection. As for other less pleasant things, he has to learn to ignore and trivialize them, so they do not occupy a large place in his life. The evil inclination is always advising a person to get caught up in marginal things and make them the main focus of his life, because it wants to ruin him and destroy every good thing he has. He should instead focus on the main things of life, which is to work on love and brotherhood.

If a person loses the main anchors of his life, he is in danger of losing his principles. He should go to his mentor who will plumb his soul, and discern what is healthy and good for his soul and spirit. That will save him from sinking into an abyss of despair and sorrow; there is nothing worse than this. Every kind of illness can occur to a person whose soul is unhappy, when he doesn’t live his own truth and instead lives a life to satisfy others. He lives the life of everyone except his own, and quickly brings upon himself an agonizing and painful death.

This article was written in cooperation with Shuva Israel