Thanks to all of you brave people who took on last Friday’s question and courageously shared your answers. The simplest questions are often the hardest to answer, but that’s how you become better, by doing the hard work others avoid.
Speaking of hard work, let’s talk love.
Not the idea or the feeling. Let’s talk about the real thing, the expression and demonstration of love.
Love, in its most pure and powerful form, is fully expressed, demonstrated openly and shared freely. Love isn’t meant to be contained. It’s not meant to be internally felt but not externally expressed. It’s not for you to possess. It’s not for you to carry around inside yourself.
Love gains its power by passing between people. When the love you feel for someone is expressed through your attitude, action, and words in a way they can see it, feel it, and hear it, that’s love.
That’s not to say that love you feel but don’t fully express is bad. Certainly not. It’s just incomplete. It’s unfulfilling on both sides. Love inherently wants to be fully expressed and fully received. That is love fully realized. That is love’s power fully realized.
I’m sharing this with you because of what I’ve observed over the last few years. People are afraid to show love. True love. Powerful love. Not romantic love necessarily. Just real, full love.
That level of expression makes us feel vulnerable and exposed. So we think it but don’t alway show it. We feel it but don’t always express it. At least not the way we really feel it.
We worry whether it will be received the right way. We get insecure about whether it will be reciprocated. We get self-conscious about how we’ll be perceived, not only by those receiving our expressions but by those who merely witness it.
This happens with friends. It happens with teammates and colleagues. This happens in coaches who feel love for athletes but worry about appearing weak. This happens in teachers who feel love for students but focus instead on lower level tasks. It even happens with parents, children, and in marriage as some of you are all too familiar.
As I write this I’m reminded of the old Clint Black lyrics, “Love isn’t something that we find … it isn’t something that we have … it’s something that we do.”
I can distill this whole message down, as I love to do, to a simple statement:
If you feel love, then show love.
You’ll be better for it. So will those who receive it and those who witness it. Love transforms.
Everything is training for something. Do the work.
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