During LOVE MONTH this February, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on what it means to love. One of my goals for 2021 is to improve my character and genuinely become a more loving, others-oriented person. In fact, in our final episode of Season 2, “Hello 2021,” I told Rosanna I want to have “an increased awareness and care of others around me,” and have “consistent and surprising charity with my time, money, and energy.”
Thanks to LOVE MONTH this February and the help of books like Everybody Always and conversations like this one I share with Rosanna, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about myself and my attitude, feelings, and actions towards others. And I came to a conclusion that sort of caught me off guard: demonstrating love towards others is (and should be) inconvenient.
Maybe you can help me work through my thinking on this by adding to this conversation in a comment below. Hopefully I get you thinking too.
Love Is a Lot of Things, But…Inconvenient?
Now hear me out on this. I think that when we normally think about love, we think about that warm, core feeling we have when we’re with or thinking about someone else. When Rosanna walks into a room, I feel those butterflies. When I think about my grandparents, I feel the nostalgia. When I pass a stranger and we nod politely, I feel like I wish them well.
But these are just feelings…none of which actually do anything for the other person. Not yet, anyway.
John Mayer’s song “Love is a Verb” suggests exactly that. “When you show me love / I don’t need your words.” I can FEEL love towards someone. I can even SAY something about my love. But it doesn’t actually mean anything unless it’s expressed in some sort of action.
Okay, so love implies action. We’ve heard that before. But why would I say that it is inconvenient action? I suppose there’s a lot of actions we take that sort of look like love, but are really just us being polite, or us being responsible. When I say “please” and “thank you” to Rosanna, it’s not really because I love her, but because that’s what I say to anyone when I’m being nice. When I bring home the bacon for my kids, I wouldn’t say that’s it’s particularly loving of me to do so – they’re my kids and it’s the responsible thing to do.
For me, as I’ve been reflecting, true and genuine expressions of love are actions that contribute to the wellbeing of another’s life. These can be big or small selfless gestures. But then the more I thought about it, the more my attention was drawn to the idea of “selfless.”
A “selfless” gesture is one that benefits the other person, but not me. It is an act that doesn’t correspond with my agenda. It is a moment where I prioritize someone else’s wellbeing over my own. It is done to some degree of expense of my time, energy, and preference. A selfless, loving gesture is, well…inconvenient.
You Sound Like a Jerk
I understand that when we think of doing something loving as an inconvenience, it makes it sound like I’m thinking, “Well, I really don’t want to do this right now, and it certainly puts me out…but here you go. Here’s something loving.”
But let’s get over that distasteful connotation of “inconvenience.” Instead, what if we embraced it? I’m serious. Let’s try putting our loving gestures within this framework and see how they truly look:
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My kids want to play with me, but I want to work out. I play with them anyway. It’s inconvenient to me at the time, but they know I love them through my interaction.
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Rosanna wants the bathroom painted. I want to lay on the couch watching football. I paint the bathroom anyway, so she feels like something valuable to her has been attended to.
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My neighbor needs their driveway shoveled. My back already hurts from doing my driveway. I shovel theirs anyway because then they can get to the grocery store.
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The local food pantry is hosting its annual fundraiser. I would rather spend my money on, well, anything else. I donate anyway, knowing that maybe one more person will be fed.
The list could go on, but you sense the theme. The truest gestures of love come with some degree of cost.
In fact, I think we end up sounding like jerks if there were NO inconvenience. To me, that means that we’re only loving in easy, polite ways.
Inconvenience – Yes. But a Joyful One.
Of course, the point is not to be thinking about (and definitely not to be griping about) the inconvenience that our love costs us. This is a sure fire way to actually sound like a jerk and burn ourselves out.
There’s that old story about the guy who decides to take a vacation, but he ends up being miserable the whole time because all he can think about is how much it cost him. An entire week by the pool in the Caribbean sun wasted, all because this guy couldn’t shake the input – or the cost – of the activity. This clouded his ability to focus on the output of his investment: the beautiful surroundings and relaxation.
So I’m calling love a “joyful inconvenience.” We can center our attention on what it would cost us to love someone else. But then we’d be no better than that guy brooding at the pool. The real joy of love comes from the output – the way we make someone else feel, and the way we make the world one ounce more pleasant.
I guess what I’m saying is I don’t want to settle for my love to be so easy, so cost-less. If I’m only loving people when it’s convenient for me, when it doesn’t really prioritize someone over myself, when it’s at such a negligible personal cost that it’s easy…I don’t think that’s saying much about my love.
In fact, as I’ve already begun discovering, we begin to look forward to these inconveniences, these expressions of our feelings towards others. We might even start calling it joy, and the feeling of inconvenience becomes diminished as the well-being we’ve shared with others through our actions is amplified.
This year as I continue to dwell on this, I want to surprise myself with what I end up being willing to do for others. And I want to be even more attuned to the inconveniences others endure in order to express their love toward me. Maybe then I can look back on 2021 and say to myself, with a heart full of joy, that maybe those inconveniences were never so horrible after all.
But maybe I’m off on this. Let me know what this makes you think!