When a person gets married, they have seven berachot (blessings). The first is hagafen (the vine), but the first beracha is Shehakol bara lichvodo: that everything was created for his honor. Where’s me bara? That everything in the world has a little emptiness, and if you have the wrong eyes, you’re just going to see emptiness. Why is this the first beracha in a wedding? The answer is because it’s most relevant in a marriage, because so often in a marriage, it is a state of bara. So often in a marriage, you have so many things to appreciate, but you see the one thing that you see the wrong way. And your cognitive dissonance makes you flip what should be a gift into a reason to complain.
I’ve said this a lot of times: I meet with a lot of couples before they get married, because if we do a wedding, you speak at the wedding, you meet with the couple, and every time you say, “Why do you—what, what do you appreciate about each other?” Every single time, literally every single time, the groom says, “You know, I really appreciate her. She puts me first.” Now I’ve had plenty of conversations with people who have been married for 10 years. None of them say, “My wife puts me first.” What happened? What happened is you start to see the world wrong. So when you’re dating, you’re—you’re excited. You can’t believe what this is. You can’t believe you’re going to have someone who’s going to help you and take care of you and be there for you. Just like Adam HaRishon. But then within minutes, just like Adam HaRishon, you’re going to blame the gift. It’s why children don’t appreciate parents. That’s why parents don’t appreciate children. It’s why employees don’t appreciate bosses, and why bosses don’t appreciate employees. It’s why parents don’t appreciate schools, and schools sometimes don’t appreciate parents. It’s why brothers don’t appreciate siblings. It’s why sisters at times don’t appreciate each other. It’s why a grandparent at times doesn’t appreciate a grandparent, or why a parent-in-law doesn’t appreciate a son-in-law, or a son-in-law doesn’t appreciate a mother-in-law or father-in-law.
There are so many relationships that are gifts that we have found a way, because Hashem created the world this way, that we don’t see it. So when Bereshit, when Hashem bara (created) the world, it was Elohim. Hashem put in the world an element of darkness, an element that people will see all of the gifts around them as judgment. And they won’t see them as the gift that they are intended to be.