Love: What if We Care?

If we care to love, we have found the path to our happiness.
Love is a strong feeling of affection that moves us to behave and act for the well-being of the object of our love. Before we can love others, we need to love ourselves. We have genuine love when we grow with our loves ones. To love is to give away but find ourselves with more.

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40)
Love is God's greatest commandment. Every loving act towards others is an expression of love for God. How do we love others? What if we care for someone? How can we know that we genuinely love a person? What does it take to love someone?

Love is a strong feeling of affection that moves us to behave and act for the well-being of the object of our love. Before we can love others, we need to love ourselves. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” When we love our self first, the love we have for others will be genuine. Isn't loving ourselves accepting our self for who we are? When we have accepted ourselves for who we are, we reveal ourselves to others without pretenses, lies, and deception. Loving others means genuinely accepting them for who they are. Loving others means tolerating their uniqueness. When we love others, we see and accept their imperfections, weaknesses, and irritating manners, and we notice and appreciate their attractive features, strengths, unique talents, and charming ways. Sam Keen, a noted American author known for his exploration of questions regarding love, affirms this idea beautifully in the remark “You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.”

Acceptance and appreciation enables us to spontaneously do innumerable loving gestures. The simple act of smiling at someone can be very heart-warming. Saying short greetings of recognition and good wishes, expressing remarks of appreciation and encouragements, or simply paying attention are simple acts of caring that can have a rippling effect in perpetuating an atmosphere of love. Mother Teresa said: “There are no great acts. There are only small acts done with great love.” What if, each day, we do small loving acts to others with the intention of making their day just a little better? We may never know how much better they felt but these small acts can make us feel as good as we wanted them to feel.

Though we may love all people as God has commanded, we express our love for each one of them in different ways. Our desire for their happiness out of love is a constant, but the expression of our love varies from person to person. Expressing our love requires time and effort. We may want a wonderful and fulfilled life for all people, but with our limited time and capabilities, we can only choose a few with whom to spend most of our time and effort. We find joy in being around these people. We smile as we see them, laugh at their humor, and ponder at their insights. We spend time with them to get to know and truly understand them. We listen and we listen well. We attend to their needs. We help them in discovering their talents, developing their potentials, and fulfilling their dreams. We cheer at their accomplishments, and ache at their afflictions. It is the time we spend with them that makes them special in our life. As described in Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince: “... in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.”

We give our time and effort to those we love without expecting anything in return but the joy of the act of loving. When we spend time with someone or do something for someone, we make those choices because they make us happy. Love is not an investment from which we can expect any form of returns. Parents who build all of sorts of expectations from their children for all the things that they do for them are lacking in genuine love.

We seek to cultivate the growth of those we love in various aspects of their life – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. As we do, we need to make thoughtful and difficult choices. When do we give in and when do we hold back? When do we pull them in and when do we push them out? We struggle with our loved ones as we urge them to grow, arguing and confronting to seek better understanding that we may guide and assist them, but neither control them nor deter them from pursuing their dreams. We have genuine love when we grow with our loves ones. Loving is when we give away but we find ourselves with more. Loving is providing support without creating dependency. Loving is living a full life with its ups and downs. At times we may be gripped by fear, at other times we may be struck with doubts. At times we may be inflamed with anger, at other times we may be slapped with rejection. Perhaps, these are the growing pains of loving. In the end, it is genuine love that makes us win. Mother Teresa said: “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”

What if we care? If we care to love, we have found the path to our happiness. Leo Tolstoy wrote: “The means to gain happiness is to throw out for oneself like a spider in all directions an adhesive web of love, and to catch in all that comes.” According to C. S. Lewis. “Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.” God may have many reasons for making “love” his greatest commandment but one of them must be that we become truly happy.