Happy Valentines

Below is a short essay by a man named Patrick Lencioni. He is best known for his consulting business (The Table Group) that helps top tier businesses build strong organizations -- and his many best selling books.

I've heard him speak at Leadership Summit, and know that he is also a man of faith. His essay below reveals that as He talks about the unconditional love that powerful relationships are built around.

Happy reading and Happy Valentines . . . .

Simple Wisdom:Love is a Verb

It amazes me how the simplest of truths are so easily forgotten, and how much pain in life is a result of that forgetting. One of the primary examples of this is the concept of love.

One of the worst misconceptions that people have about love, especially but not limited to that between a man and a woman, is that it is a function of feelings. Movies, television shows, celebrity magazines and the like promote this notion that attraction and love are the same, and that they should be entertained for as long as the feelings persist. The result of this, of course, is that too many worthwhile relationships end unnecessarily, replaced by new ones that again run their course when the feelings subside.

I recently saw a commercial for a new television show called Cupid, which is supposedly about finding real love. In the commercial, the main character who claims to be cupid explains that “love is heat, chemistry, sex!” And he is the protagonist on the show, the voice of modern wisdom and passion.

I use this example only because it is the most recent one I have seen and was so specific. But it wouldn’t take long to find a hundred other examples, just as egregious ones, by watching the trailers at your local cineplex or by glancing at the magazines in your grocery store check-out line.

What is tragic about this prevailing idea of love is that it actually influences so many people’s lives, and in profound, costly ways. The frequency of divorce and the percentage of our children who are living without one of their parents have reached epic proportions, not seen before in society. While people can speculate about the long-term impact this will have on those children and on society in general, it is almost impossible not to trace its cause back to the shallow, feeling-based definition of love. It still confounds me that people actually buy into it!

But true love is more about the actions we take and the decisions we make than it is about the feelings we have. That’s not to say that feelings don’t have a role in love, but that’s certainly not the most important or prevalent element involved.

I’ve learned this in my own family. I know that I’m not exhibiting the highest order of love for my wife when she looks her best on a romantic evening and I’m remembering how attracted I’ve been to her since college. It’s when she’s throwing up or looking scraggily or when she’s mad at me and the last thing I feel like doing is loving her. That’s when real love kicks in and I choose to love her.

And I don’t change my son’s diaper because I feel like it, or because I find him cute. I do it because it is what is best for him, and I’m committed to him. And I’m pretty sure that at least one of my boys will do something someday, maybe tomorrow, that will push me to the point of temporarily losing my feelings of affection for him, and that is when real love will override my feelings and he will know what it means to be loved.

Those who wait for their feelings to inspire them to love will certainly find themselves in temporary and fleeting relationships, with friends, spouses and children. And they will leave a trail of scarred and hurt people behind them.

Now, in spite of this grave and prevalent misunderstanding about love, people still seem to appreciate the real thing when they see it, even if they don’t understand it. Whenever someone celebrates a 50th wedding anniversary, everyone reacts with admiration and approval. Some will say “I guess they were meant to be,” or “how lucky they are to have found the right person.” What they don’t realize is that those who thrive and survive for fifty or more years merely understand that love is not a noun. It is a verb. It’s not something you feel or that exists independent of the people involved, but rather something you do. Especially when you don’t feel like it. Happy St. Valentines Day.