Now, I don’t want to dredge up the horrors of your High School past, but do you remember chemistry class? Ok, I’ll be honest; I didn’t exactly have what you would call a “fun experience,” for my course was taught by the much “beloved” (gentle euphemism for  HATED) physical education coach who most definitely preferred pushups and 2 mile runs to mixing beakers filled with colorful chemicals. That being said, I revisited chemistry some 18 years later (yes, the trauma lasted that long) only to discover its real magic. You see, chemistry is about bonds, i.e. what goes with what. Are you ready for a sweet example?  Let’s talk about sugar – CHO in chemical notation.  CHO is an acronym for Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen. For reasons detailed in the textbooks of chemistry and physics, these 3 otherwise insanely inedible elements (ingesting pure carbon will kill you) combine to create the most amazingly tasty stuff on planet earth. Why, you ask? Simple, they work well together. Here’s the amazing part, nature does not permit bonds to form that are not energetically favorable – it “digs” energetic balance! Kabbalah teaches that true friendship, platonic or otherwise, is also the result of favorable energetic bonding. In Hebrew, friendship is pronounced, “Yedeed.” Now to be a good chemist we must simplify the Hebrew word Yedeed (friendship) to its root level (chemists love simplifying the world around them by breaking complicated things down to their simplest parts.) If we break down yedeed to its most fundamental parts, we discover the two letter Hebrew word Yad – “hand,” written twice. To clarify, when you write the Hebrew word “Yad” (hand) twice, one Yad next to the other, you create the word “Yedeed” (friendship.) So what do hands and friendship have in common? Chemistry baby! When we learn to walk hand in hand as “partners,” i.e. similar in goals, values, and beliefs, we forge a bond of lasting friendship. In particular, the people we let into our private lives must always energetically “enhance” us – inspire us to become better, happier, and healthier people. Why allow someone emotionally/spiritually disruptive into your private world? Practice, like nature, saying “no” to all the wrong ones (energetic bonds deemed unfavorable), and I promise you will create ample space for the right ones to come. This is practicing chemistry at the level of the soul!