Love and Change

DR. ICHAK ADIZES deals with change in the corporate world every day. It is his raison d’étre! With a shift in focus, here he describes the interplay of dynamics between love and change at the personal level, how pain is a necessary accompaniment to love, and how we can allow both to coexist in a healthy way.

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Why do love and pain go together? As a Serb song says, “Zar bez suza ima ljubavi,” meaning, “Can there be love without tears?”

Here is a commentary by Hazrat Inayat Khan, the founder of Western Sufism, who lived from 1882 to 1927:

The effect of love is pain. The love that has no pain is no love. The lover who has not gone through the agonies of love is not a lover; he claims love falsely. … Rumi describes six signs of the lover: deep sigh, mild expression, moist eyes, eating little, speaking little, sleeping little, which all show the sign of pain in love.

 Why does love give both the loved one and the lover a sense of unending happiness – and at the same time a feeling of deep pain and despair? What is going on?