Do You Know What I Need? : Marc Gafni

Do You Know what I Need?
Do I Know What You Need?

The master Moshe Leib of Sassov said he never knew what it meant to be a lover until he learned it from a drunkard. It happened that the master was in a tavern and overheard a dialogue between two men deep in their drink. One was professing how much he loved the other, but the other argued that that this was not so.

“Ivan,” he cried, “believe me when I tell you, I love you more dearly than anything in the world.”

“Not so, Igor,” Ivan replied. “You don’t really love me at all.”
Igor gulped down a glass of vodka. The tears streamed down his face. “I swear Ivan, I love you with all my heart,” he wept.

Ivan shook his head. “Igor, if you really do love me, tell me why I am not satisfied in my life. If you really loved me you would know what I desire.” With this, Igor was silent. This time Ivan was the one who cried.

All the faces of eros show themselves in the tale. Interconnectivity, desire, being on the inside and the fullness of presence. If you really love me then we are deeply connected. You hear the deepest desires of my soul because their melodies resonate in your soul as well. You learn to hear my soul’s music by being fully present in our encounter. Moreover you are radically empathetic to my needs. Radical empathy comes when the fullness of presence engenders a great yearning to move beyond the alienation that separates us. It is this feeling of emptiness and loneliness that propel you to shatter the ego boundaries that alienate us and enter the inside of my story. You are my erotic lover.