"Let me tell you what I try to do. Imagine that you're looking at a candle. What you're really seeing is a lump of wax with a thread down its middle. So when do the thread and wax become a candle? Or, in other words, when do they fulfill the purpose for which they were created? When you put a flame to the thread...
From a conversation between the Lubavitcher Rebbe and Yehudah Avner