I recently read a blog post here, regarding whether or not you had to love your job. I immediately thought, love is a bit of a strange word to associate with a profession. If you love the job, you are missing out on the true benefits available and you are also reducing life's greatest gift to an vocational endeavor.
Three little words, "I love you". Somehow they have become marginalized and trivialized. Those words that carry so much weight when analyzed, get lost in the mundane shuffle of the modern world. "Love you" shared receives the hurried "love you too". reply. Time passes and "love you too" morphs into "un-huh". Three little words that join together the "I" and the "you" with the most powerful emotion we can experience.
It might be the fact that we describe our feelings regarding things and places and events and celebrities, etc with a word that truly describes a relationship greater than anyone can have with any of those things. Subconsciously we know that love is the most powerful word, so we try to emphasize how we feel by using the statement ..." I love (place whatever you like here)".
To be sure, I am just as guilty as anyone else. No doubt I have shared I love pizza, I love baseball, I love sunrise on the ocean, I love dancing in the moonlight and I love playing golf. In doing so, I denigrate and devalue the very emotion I am sharing. I do really enjoy a pizza and I truly enjoy all the nuances of baseball. I will patiently wait in the early morning chill on the shore to watch in wonder as the sun rises. When the harvest moon comes up, I find it incredibly sensual to take Lourdes hand and dance. Put me together with friends of thirty years on the first tee at Gunpowder Golf Course and I can't wait to tee it up. But, to be fair, as much as I might enjoy all of that, love is greater.
You see, love is the ultimate. Love is pure. I have to admit, I have had some bad pizza (who ever conjured up microwave pizza..those two words should never be used together). There have been times when I have become distracted and forgotten the baseball game. I have been to the beach and slept in many more times than I have gotten up before dawn. There are 12 or 13 full moons every year, I have missed more than I have danced beneath. It may shock you to know that I have passed up many opportunities to play a round of golf. I have never faltered in love.
Three little words only indicate a feeling. Love is so much more. Love involves what you feel and how you react. Love is a very personal description of your motivation. Love is not passive. Love is action. Love is alive. Love is the motivation that creates action. Love begins with in and once accepted, love can be shared. Love is so much more than three little words.
Christians are very familiar with a few references to love in the Bible. John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 13:34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another."
Love is described very well in I Corinthians " If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing .Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes,what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
I think of all the things that I have claimed to love and I realize they are all gifts. I understood that once I accepted that my existence and being was a gift and learned to love that fact, I understood the love I had to give was so much more valuable than a desire to eat a good pizza. Some have thought that love is a two way street or interaction. I am here to share that love is a one way street that flows from inside you out to another. It is not always returned. The person may not have reached the point where they have learned to love themselves.
I promise you, should you be fortunate enough to love and be loved in return, you will understand how insignificant those three little words become when measured against the roaring fire in your heart. Oh, you will still share the words. You will live the words. You will understand the power behind them and maybe, just maybe you will back off sharing you love this or that. You will grasp the reverence that belongs behind those three little words. My wish is that we all reach that level.
In closing, many clients have said to me "You must really love your job." This has been in response to showing as many homes as necessary for them to find the "right one." It has been shared after I have driven to meet them on Christmas Eve to get time sensitive paperwork signed. I have heard it after settlement when clients realize the contingencies added to an offer truly protected them. It has even been shared after I spent an afternoon repairing a sidewalk that a contractor missed when fulfilling one of my clients responsibilities on a home inspection. I have heard it often. I smile and say "No, I love my clients, the rest is easy."
I have to share, I don't love my job. No, it is the love in my heart that gives me the freedom to do what is necessary to serve my clients. It is the love I have that gives me the strength to carry on in spite of what may seem as insurmountable roadblocks between my clients and a successful transaction. You see, following the direction of my faith, I can overlook the egos of others. I understand my place and I can easily stand on the solid rock of my faith during the most trying negotiations. Love gives me power that fear can not overcome. Three little words, they include the most powerful word of all...love.
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