A good heart contains in it the faculties for getting along with and living with all people, whether neighbors who you face each day by virtue of their dwelling near you, or friends who you actively choose to be close to. You want good, and not bad, for all others, you are wise and behave so as to produce good and harmonious consequences into the "long run" from your choices and actions.

In chapter six, Pirkei Avos also describes a good heart as one of the 48 things needed to acquire Torah. You can talk and intellectualize all you want. But, unless you can absorb and assimilate Torah into your heart; to feel it, to act on it, to spontaneously respond to life based on Torah, and to seek aggressively to do good for your fellow Jews - being delighted for each opportunity to do so (Tiferes Yisroel), your "Torah" is as if not yet learned (Rabbi Yisroel Salanter).

The Talmud (Kidushin 30b) tells us that G-d created the capacity for bad in the human being, and He created the Torah as the antidote. In our context, the cure for fault within every person is for each to sincerely occupy himself with learning Torah; absorbing and assimilating the Torah into one's heart, and thereby bringing it into fruition and practice in his choices, judgement and behavior - especially in human relations; the "cure" will come to show up, in "real life."

The implications of this for relating to people and for marriage are clear. All midos (character traits) and human qualities are in the heart. The heart is the deepest and most fundamental element of the human being. A good and spiritually developed heart is the beginning of all behaviors, choices and responses to life.

The way one relates to anybody in general, and to a spouse in particular, stands or falls on the spiritual quality of one's heart. We will come back later to study the Torah meaning and role of the heart in greater depth. Since midos is one of the most crucial elements of the heart, let's take our first look at midos now.

Key elements of readiness for marriage are possession and valuing of midos (character traits). This devolves around working on destroying bad traits, building good traits at all times.

The Vilna Gaon (Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna, eighteenth century; "gaon" means "towering peak"), one of the greatest geniuses in history and one of the greatest rabbis known to have ever lived, writes (Evven Shlaima) that the ESSENCE PURPOSE OF HUMAN LIFE IS FULL-TIME WORK ON MIDOS (CONQUERING ONE'S INNER FLAWS AND BUILDING ONE'S INNER CHARACTER), AND EVERY MOMENT THAT YOU ARE NOT WORKING AT CONQUERING AND DEVELOPING MIDOS, YOU ARE WASTING THAT IRREPLACEABLE MOMENT OF YOUR LIFE! The soul needs Torah just as the soil needs rain. Just as rain causes whatever was planted to sprout forth - whether for good or for bad - so does Torah cause whatever is in a person's heart to sprout forth. The Torah develops whatever is in the heart. If one's heart is good, his spiritual qualities will increase. If one's heart is evil, Torah will increase his laziness, wickedness or bitterness. Torah increases whatever is naturally in one and you must consciously make strong effort to smash the inner bad and to develop the inner good. Each day before study, one must cleanse his heart of impure thoughts or conduct which can effect fear of sin and doing of good deeds. One must labor from youth till old age to develop oneself for the good. Further, one must never stray so far as to be unable to help himself. One must constantly examine himself, plan changes against evil traits with craftiness and without laziness. One must cure inner traits before character improvement is externally recognizable. All good behavior depends upon repairing character traits, which are like garments to mitzvos and embody central principles of the Torah. All sins are rooted in faults of character.

To bring the Vilna Gaon's writing into our context, fundamental to marriageability is a foundation in destroying character faults and building good character qualities.

Over the years, I interviewed numerous elderly successful veterans of marriage, rabonim who have dealt with shalom bayis (troubled marriage) or gittin (divorce cases), marriage counselors, frustrated singles, divorced people who "learned their lessons," etc. - people who are on the "front lines" of the subject. If you asked me to boil down their cumulative descriptions of what a marriage is, I would say

* pleasing one another,
* getting along,
* building a relationship gradually over a lifetime and
* giving yourself up.