This construct of love is fascinating always to explore. Many people mistake ‘worrying’ about someone, helping someone, taking care of someone as “Love” when it could just be a sense of duty.
For example many parents don’t love, and sometimes don’t even LIKE their children(many people lately are courageous to confess this to me, and many brave ones publicly), but they do the above out of a sense of dutiful self preservation.
People get into partnerships with others and end up marrying them even, because that’s what is done and/or there’s some kind of rationalised sense of expectation that they should “Stay with them” – ‘we have a child together, I have known him so long, maybe this could be my last chance, etc’
None of this is love. So what is? I don’t know, I’m still exploring. In my exploration the last few years (10 or so actively), I’m discovering more what it isn’t than what it is.
But what I am getting so far is that love is that sense of “I-can’t-help-it-ness” about someone. That feeling of “just satisfaction” about the person. As a result you are able to ignore a lot of their flaws and fumbles, and yes, their welfare becomes important, but it’s more secondary than the feelings and emotions you experience around them.
The deep feeling of belonging and contentment about their presence: whether they are actively in your life or not is the essence of this emotion.
Dr Myles Munroe says be careful of the becauses in love. When someone says I love you because… : be afraid. Once the condition behind the because goes away, so does their love he says. Anita Baker perhaps put it nicely when she sang: I love you just because you are you!
The area of study about this subject, in psychology is called intimacy motivation. And it’s fascinating and full of some interesting contradictions, but it’s revealing at the same time if one keeps their mind clear. But with all that is emerging, it is also important to acknowledge that there’s a spiritual element about loving someone else, that sometimes scientists might gloss over and ignore.
I have explored the concept of unconditional love, phenomenologically, existentially and normatively, and have come very close to it phenomenologically, and I understand better now the allegory of Jesus on the cross dying for “Our sins”. But since I came across Don Miguel Ruiz’s Mastery of Love, I have been more curious about a lot of what he says in this simple but profound book.
One enduring example he gives is about the stars in the sky that give you joy, not because they give you light, but because they are there… And just their presence, the way they are arranged, the times they show up, that’s what seems to be enough.
The mistake is trying to pluck the star from the sky…So that you can “Own it” – and the resulting pain thereof. I might not be remembering it all correctly, it was such a long time ago, but I’m certain you are now curious to go explore it.
This was not meant to be a treatise lol… It was a short reflection in the morning but perhaps it will be good to tie it up nicely.
I have sat in rooms and explained “Love” from a neuroscientific level, but I always eventually admit to myself, it doesn’t fully satisfy the question of why a woman who has everything, still stays with a man who “Abuses” her. Or a father loving a wayward son over and over again.
In many ways we want people to return our feelings of love, but perhaps this is a fantasy living in the fables and fairy tales, in real life this is rare, because the feelings you experience about that person are unique to you and emanate from you. Is it possible, I think so, but very rare. So, many people have to continuously live with this bit of “Unequal” yoke. So the answer to “I love you “, it turns out CAN be “Thank you”. As unsatisfactory as that maybe to the sayer 😁
As a result, I don’t say these words unless they come from the place I described above, because then they are a pure expression of reality that is not dependent on hearing those words back. Like saying ‘the sun is in the sky’ – lol.
Anyway, a few years ago, as my exploration of this topic expanded, I started also realizing how in leadership, it takes this kind of love to be a great leader. Because shem the pain of being a President of the country who is not loved by his people, at least not publicly, is unimaginable if your actions are not driven by more than just service to the nation, the organization, the team.The existential angst ouch, it hurts just thinking about it!
It takes a certain level of love – for something to sustain an organization beyond just the profit itself.
Adam Kahane says “To create lasting change we have to learn to work fluidly with two distinct, fundamental drives that are in tension: power—the single-minded desire to achieve one’s solitary purpose; and love—the drive towards unity. They are seemingly contradictory but in fact complimentary.”
This applies in all of social spaces I have seen. I don’t use the words Power though, and prefer more the words “Authority”, and first of all a deep sense of Self-Authorization, a belief that I myself am enough, and am the right person to carry this love and share it.
So leadership is an act of love. My work with leaders lately is to get them to tap into that thing, beyond the rational, that gets them doing what they are doing. Because without that love, there’s no fulfillment, just duty. It may later just feel hurting. A chore!
Yes, people may follow, but it is likely because of what THEY love and not what the leader loves.
Neal Donald Walsch says everything is an act of love, even if it’s a distorted act of love. He says that for example, fear is an act of love, because if one loved nothing, one would fear nothing. In my research about what stops leaders from achieving the results they want, what emerged is many people are fearful. So perhaps in Neal’s conceptualization then, they love something- and the work is for them to emerge what they love- so that they can live the love better than the fear.
This moves into a fascinating area of social love. Which I will perhaps explore more in the next captured stream of consciousness, should it present itself.
But I sat in an interview with one of the leading global consultants, Doug Krug, a few years ago… And he shared very intimately how his life changed when he came back from death, and learned the lesson he is applying in organizations today, that Love is all there is, really. I am not doing our conclusions justice here – but listen to the whole conversation, publicly available at www.hopemakerscollective.com/podcast
I don’t know why I chose to write about Love so early in the morning. The voice of a certain legendary musician on her own, Natalie Cole, rings in my head and is perhaps a good way to wrap this up:
Writers write about love till their fingers are sore
Fighters fight about love till their flat on the floor
You can write about it, fight about it
Think about it, drink about it
You can’t know all about love unless you fall in love! (Arthur & Dana)
Mongezi C Makhalima © 2024
The Museletter 
Leave a comment