DAY 2: A Love with Discipline . . .

Tonight is Day 2 of the Omer. . . Ha-yom sh'nei yamim la-omer.

Here's how we're going to do things.
My plan is for each Omer update to have four parts:
1) The Omer count (which we've already done for today).
2) The Omer intersection for the day, where we explore our intersecting values
3) The Omer challenge of the day, where we attempt to find ways of applying this to our lives
4) The Omer update - an update of how things went the previous day.
And I invite you all to comment on any or all of these parts of any of these Omer entries - I hope this can become more of a conversation than a lecture.  (And if anyone can help me figure out how to put this mini-road map somewhere in the blog other than the body here, please let me know!)

So, without further adieu, on to part 2:
2) THE OMER INTERSECTION: Chesed + Gevurah -- (Cue the Monday Night Football smashing helmets) -- Loving Kindness vs. Discipline
And with this second day, our challenge is to explore where loving kindness (chesed) intersects with the idea of discipline (Gevurah).  Loving Kindness + Discipline . . . it is starting to sound like a defense of corporal punishment.  And before we get too carried away, let me qualify the idea of discipline, gevurah, just a bit.  This is not the kind of discipline one dishes out towards others, but is meant to be a kind of self-discipline - a level of commitment and dedication and of tempering oneself from getting too swept away.

Movies often romanticize the concept of love at first sight, and we tend to idealize love as an easy feel-good experience.  But the truth of the matter is that love is hard work.  If it was easy, being in love would have little value.  And I mean this for all kinds of love: romantic, platonic friendship, familial, and unconditional.  This value clash reminds us that we have to temper ourselves to make sure that we do not smother those we love with excessive kindness.  We have the responsibility to avoid becoming too much of an enabler of negative attributes or detrimental behaviors for those we love.  And at the same time, if we are to build a foundation of love within our relationships, we also have to give of ourselves willingly and not only make our loved ones cave to our own terms.  All of these pitfalls fall into the category of approaching our acts of loving kindness - the ways we treat others - vis-á-vis discipline.

There can be a fine line between this idea of support and discipline, but we'll get into knowing that a bit later in the week (gotta avoid an omer spoiler?).

PART 3: THE OMER CHALLENGE:
SO, how do we take this into our lives today?  We should ask ourselves, in what ways might my giving be more about me than about those I love?  Do I give what is truly needed?  In what areas am I giving too much, and where am I not giving enough? 
Upon thinking of this, I resonated most with the first topical question I asked.  It is somewhat related to yesterday's chesed-chesed matchup, but with a slightly different nuance.  Instead of being more about expressing something from within, this challenge is to go out and give a loving gesture to someone else that is fully on their terms, with what their needs may be - and for a temporary moment, remove our own sense of what we need in return, or how we would want to do things.  I.e. if cooking a meal for a loved one, try making it totally attuned to your child's/spouse's/partner's/friend's palette. This exercise is not intended to become a modus operandi, a standard operating procedure, but hopefully, it will help us understand what our loved ones truly need from us a bit more.

PART 4: THE OMER UPDATE:
So, 1 day down, and though I am not going to go into full details on everything I did (I did not ask all of my loved ones to become a part of my Omer experiment, and it would be unfair to drag them all in).  But taking yesterday's challenge to heart, I wrote a handwritten note to someone I love, I made some phone calls to family and friends, just to let them know I care, amongst other things.  I have to say, it was really wonderful to make the time to do these things that I often feel as though I have no time to do.  It motivated me to try this more often.  I just hope I can ride this wave of momentum. 

May you all love with discipline for the rest of Day 2, and may it help us all to continue to grow.