There are many types of love.
Love of family, love for your wife, husband, dog, children, parents, aunts, uncles, etc. — basically love for the individuals and collectives that can be found in your tribe.
Love of stuff, things, and states — such as sunsets, a great salad, beautiful music, inspiring painting, etc.
The list goes on and on… only limited by how loose you are willing to be in your usage of the word. “Oh, my god I just looooove that dress on you.”
All of the above are not included in the “Three Loves” mentioned in the title of this blog. Here are the three loves:
- Love what you do.
- Love the people you do it with.
- Love what you leave behind.
These three loves are not a product of accident, fashion, or preference. These three loves come from directed intentional effort — they take work. And, it is these three loves that will yield a sustained sense of worth — as in a life worth living.
Even a modicum of investigation will reveal that these loves must be the product of voluntary effort.
Name anything that you would “love” to do. Enter into the Twilight Zone, find a handy genie and wish to do that as your job. Before the end of the half-hour show you will realize that doing that thing (whatever it is) tarnishes. It will either become torture or humdrum at best. Does it have to continue as humdrum or torture? No, but the kinds of people that show up in Twilight Zone episodes rarely have the skill set required to “learn to love it”. And, eventually, you’ll need to learn to love it. Automatic love will not sustain.
Interestingly enough, it turns out that when you include working for the benefit of others into your calculations of what to do, you easily slip into activities not based on your personal preferences and hungers.
But, this blog is not about how to select “what to do.” This blog is an acknowledgement that no matter what you choose to do eventually the glitter will fade and you will find yourself in the position of needing to voluntarize your love for doing it.
And, more to the point, this blog is an acknowledgement of the importance of having the love for what you do — voluntarized or not. Without that love you can’t go the next step.
No one says that you have to love what you are doing. That is not required. There is no law demanding it. If you are a world-class gardener maintaining a vibrant, healthy, beautiful park that may be enough for the powers that be. A great garden was needed and you provided the great garden — bare essentials have been satisfied. But, that is just the bare essentials. And, blessing available to you is missing.
Until you add “love for what you do” into the mix, the transformative potential will be missing. That would be unfortunate. Unfortunate to say the least.
You can do what you need to do, do it with the people you need to do it with, and leave behind the results of this. You could do that.
I believe that to love what you do, love the people you do it with, and love what you leave behind is the real sacrifice — or at least requires a sacrifice. Take “love what you leave behind” for example.
You can use effort, selection, will among other tools and skills to sculpture the nature of what you leave behind. Don’t do those things that you know you will regret, and do those things you believe right. Let’s say you get real good at this — really, really good. Even so, it will be impossible to not have a blemish or two in your record. If you figure it all out by the time you are 40 and all your actions are right actions from 40 on, then as you look back at your life there will be the temptation to regret not having figured it out by 30. If only I had gotten this stuff figured out by 30, then I could invested an additional decade into right action. And so it would go.
If you evaluate what you leave behind through the eyes of an auditor or an actuary, you can’t help but be disappointed. But, if you look back with the eyes of a parent watching a child singing and dancing in their first school play it will be different. Sure there was a missed line or two, and the kid totally forgot the melody, and godfrey daniels they didn’t button the costume in the back. None of that would distract from the perfection of the performance.
If you can sacrifice your attitude, set aside the multitude of shoulds and shouldn’ts implanted by well meaning (or not) parents and teachers, and give up your notion of how it should have been, then you may be able to “love what you leave behind.” This will take some sacrifice… just enough that ultimately you will no longer be who you are. Meaning the relative self, the personality will be set-aside.
Doing all of this loving what you do, loving the people you do it with, and loving what you leave behind will produce a substance — a tangible, sensible, mutable substance that can be bottled, spooned, and spread like jam. Granted the bottle wouldn’t be a physical bottle — but a substance none the less.
When I think of this substance as a royal jelly capable of feeding the Absolute, it feels right — not correct perhaps, but somehow in the right direction of what it would be like.