Reflections on the ways we love
The virtue at the heart of flourishing
The most indelible marks left on me in childhood were the people who believed in and encouraged me. Early on, I came from a family without much money. I had learning disabilities. I wasn’t always popular with other kids. But I was blessed by dozens of people over the decades who made bets on me…who believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself and gave me hope that I could do anything with my life. Many of these friends and mentors counseled me not merely on how to achieve success, but to live well—to flourish. And one calling I’ve felt consistently as a result is to help to create the same opportunities for others and a world in which it is easier for everyone—regardless of background or resources—to flourish as well.
That’s one reason I write so much on purpose, meaning, and flourishing. Doing so allows me to deepen my own understanding of those topics—always so incomplete—and share what I’m learning with others.
Consistent in my exploration of those topics is the centrality of deep, positive relationships to a joyful and meaningful life. Martin Seligman weighed on this in his remarkable research on flourishing. Tyler VanderWheele and his team note the importance of human connection in their own groundbreaking research. And prior research had an even better word for these powerful connections—love. The Beatles called it all we need. Jesus’s two greatest commandments were to love God and love others. Shakespeare focused much of his most poignant writing on the subject, as have other poets and writers from John Dunne to Richard Curtis. In fact, when George Vaillant, the lead researcher of the longest-running longitudinal study in the world, was asked the study’s key finding, put it simply, “Happiness equals love—full stop.”
But what is love? Wiser men and women than I have written treatises on this very topic. The Greeks reflected deeply on types of love, and Plato authored one of his dialogues on the subject. C.S. Lewis articulated four key kinds of love, and the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard titled his own masterpiece Works of Love. I could never hope to match the beauty of depth of these reflections myself. But as the holidays approach—a time of togetherness with those we hold most dear—I was reflecting on how my own view of love has evolved.
When I was young, I loved my parents. I loved God, in my own way. I “fell in love” with girls. And like every young person became obsessed with narrow (though important) versions of the subject. Over four decades, one of the great realizations is how much more important love is to me than it was even in my youth—and how different and broader my understanding of it now is. I thought I’d share those thoughts with my readers not as an exhaustive attempt to categorize life’s most important experience but as one imperfect person’s effort to articulate some of the ways his experience of love has changed as life has stretched on.
Love as a decision
When my wife and I were dating, she (wiser than me then, as now) hammered home a concept that proved transformational for our marriage. At the time, we were “in love” in all the conventional ways. But as we approached engagement, she proffered that the love we needed to get and stay married was a decision, not a feeling. I took it to heart, and since then we remind one another periodically we are committed not because we feel like it but because we have decided to be. And the permanence of that decision forces us to find new ways to love even when feelings are hard to muster.
That’s the surprising thing about marriage: you don’t always feel in love. In the midst of sleepless nights with newborns, unexpected financial problems, clashing personalities, faltering health, and failed expectations you fight and sometimes develop real resentment and anger to the person to whom you are closest. Sometimes you want to give up. But if you both have truly decided to make it work no matter these obstacles, it sometimes does. That’s why, though there are many types of love in a marriage, I think this decision-love is perhaps the most important: it’s there even when the others fail. And it’s taught me that commitment itself can sometimes liberate us from uncertainty and doubt. A love decided with permanence offers no other way out but through. And, at least in my experience, it allows all those other feelings and experiences of love a chance to return.
Love overpowering and unconditional
I still remember the first night we brought my oldest son home from the hospital. We had a little nursery near our bedroom on the second floor of our house, and when my son woke up crying at 4:00 a.m. or so I went to sit and rock him in a little chair in his room and hopefully offer his mom some sleep. The prior three days were remarkable, but I guess in all the craziness of his birth and our hospital stay with him I had existed in a kind of shock. Sitting there peacefully in our own home, quiet having descended on the house, moonlight streaming onto his beautiful little face I remember feeling a rush of emotion I had truly never felt before.
I knew I loved this person involuntarily and unconditionally. In a moment, my heart was opened to an entirely new dimension of the universe previously closed to me. I knew what it meant to be completely willing to give your life for someone else. I understood what it meant to appreciate something almost incomprehensibly beautiful. And I felt an overpowering love that required no choice at all. I had known this person since before he was born. I would know him (I hoped) the rest of my life. And there would never be a moment he lived where at least one person wasn’t totally dedicated to him.
I’ve often reflected that it’s the closest approximation I have to how God must feel for us. We are His creation, as my son was partially mine. We are His children. And in looking at my child I understood that there was nothing he could ever do in his life that would stop me from loving him. He could make mistakes. He could even hate or abandon me. And I’d always care for him and welcome him home. I now have four children, about each of whom I feel this way. And in the mystery of that total dedication to them—lived so very imperfectly by me at times—they have humbled and transformed me.
Love born of failure and suffering
Every year I grow less judgmental of others. It’s not that I don’t have standards or believe in right and wrong. I do. And I think people should be held accountable for bad decisions and bad actions. I think we must criticize people and behaviors that are harmful. And there is love in correcting those who are harming themselves or the people around them. But my empathy has grown.
It wasn’t always so. When I was young, I was quick to judge. I was quick to criticize, to think myself better than others, to see the specks in their eyes and ignore the planks in my own. I had the kind of boundless confidence in my own rightness that can only exist in those who haven’t experienced much at all. I still sometimes suffer from this short-sightedness today.
But the decades have also allowed me a greater empathy and understanding of—a greater agape for—those around me. You see, I’ve often failed my own standards. I’ve sinned against my own belief system and others when I knew what I was doing was wrong. I’ve lost my temper. I’ve been selfish and impatient. And sometimes I’ve seemed so to others when in reality I was just hurting and sad. I’ve watched my children struggle with life threatening illness and sat awake in hospital rooms and by their bedsides tired, angry, and afraid. I’ve suffered professional failures led to sleepless weeks and months. I’ve lost friends and loved ones. I’ve fought hard for things and fallen short—confronted with the realization that perhaps not everything is possible for me. In those moments, I haven’t always behaved with generosity and care for those around me.
And in all of these trials, struggles, and sins I’ve had my heart opened to the idea that maybe others are experiencing the same in ways I can’t always see. Author Steven R. Covey told the story of a man he met on a subway. The man’s children were misbehaving and harassing other passengers as the man stood impassive and distracted. Covey confronted him, only to learn that the man’s wife—the kids’ mom—had just died. Covey’s perspective changed.
There are evils that must be confronted in this world. There are lines to draw. But there are also many instances where compassion is warranted—where the angry email is a result of someone’s private struggles or their lack of responsiveness to our needs a distraction born of loss. And while not everything should or can be accepted—relational ties must sometimes be cut—those who have experienced the humility of failure and the blessing of forgiveness often learn to apply the latter more frequently to others. Some love is born of beauty. But some is born of suffering and failure—allowing us more fully to care for those who suffer and fail just like us.
Love in submission
I remember in one particularly challenging time in my life, I was angry with God. I have long prided myself on professional success, so much so that I am frequently tempted to make it the primary measure of my self-worth. But in this instance, as during a few other periods of my life, that identity was crumbling. I felt that I was failing, lost, and struggling. I believed I was disappointing others and that my problems were permanent—that I could never be the person I wanted to be. I fought to overcome the situation. I worked hard often without much success. I prayed fervently and then angrily, as I sometimes have when I’ve felt that God has turned away. And then, I prayed brokenly, realizing I had (and have) less control over my circumstances than I might sometimes hope.
And in feeling broken, I remember distinctly and finally feeling loved myself. A wise person had once encouraged me to allow myself to believe that others (particularly God) could love me the same way I love my kids—with grace, mercy, and total acceptance. And I finally saw myself as those people must see me: worthwhile for simply being in relationship with them, not for what I’ve accomplished or what I can do—just for who I am. And I remember distinctly thinking that maybe if God and my closest friends and family could care for me that way, I could live with myself. Those problems eventually faded, as most do. I’ve since experienced the personal and professional ups and downs of any life. In the peaks I’ve been too prideful, and in the valleys too forlorn. But I’ve always remembered somewhere in the back of my mind to submit to the love of those who could care for me no matter the circumstance. And to gain comfort in that place.
Love in hope
We live in a beautiful, hopeful world. I’ve written here occasionally about the love I feel for my country—a place I view as a grand experiment freeing individuals to fully realize their own humanity and nearly limitless potential in community with others. I still have so much hope in that experiment and its power for the world. I love my friends—many I’ve now known so long now that we can simply sit and say nothing together and who I know will be there when life’s greatest challenges come.
I love my wife and kids, the endless adventure we’ve taken on as a family being hardest and best thing I’ve ever done. I’m hopeful about the power of my work, a career in which I might be able to enable just a bit more flourishing in the lives of others and at which I get to co-labor with those similarly dedicated. I love long hikes in the hills of Georgia or the mountains of the West when the beauty and scope of the world around me reminds me to keep all our problems in perspective and to hope in the endless mystery and splendor of the world. And I return time and again to a religious devotion that preaches hope as one of the three great virtues in life, which coupled with faith and love has the power to transform our lives and the world.
That’s particularly the hope I feel as Christmas approaches. It’s the season at the end of the year when we all get to experience life with those most meaningful to us, to reflect on the passing of one year and the dawn of another to come. And it’s when we get to remember the story of a frail and powerless newborn sent, by love, to offer hope to a fallen world.
Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and happy holidays to all my friends and each of you. Happiness is love. Full Stop. May we all learn that more fully and experience it more deeply in the year ahead.
Thank you!
Great read. Thanks!