Rabbi Akiva taught us to “Love your fellowman as yourself”. This is such a big mitzvah that we say it every morning before our prayers. What does it mean to love someone as yourself? First of all we have to understand what it means to love ourselves. Our first relationship has to start with us. For if we are incapable of loving, appreciating, respecting ourselves how can we ever be able to love someone else? To love ourselves doesn’t mean that we are all day patting our backs and telling ourselves how wonderful and beautiful we are. To love ourselves means that we can acknowledge the divinity in us. When H”S created Adam he blew into him a breath of life (Bereshit). The animals He created with a different life force that came from His speech, but man he blew His breath inside of him. It is very different to speak than to blow. When you speak you could do it for hours without getting tired, but to blow a balloon there is as much as you can blow. Appreciating this effort put into our making we can look at ourselves in a different way. Just as He made us, He made everyone else too. Just by meditating on this teaching we can come to really respect the greatness of the human creation coming to love ourselves in a very special way and others too.
Live a little higher
