What we do for love
Love hopes. Love perseveres. Love lasts.
It’s amazing what we do for love, isn’t it?
In the name of love, we do for our families, our friends, our neighbors, and with what’s left over, perhaps we do for ourselves.
We’re under no obligation to love. No, check that. True love is never an obligation. Love expresses itself free of compulsion, without expectation of return on investment, reciprocity or quid pro quo.
Love gives because that’s its nature.
Funny thing about love, though: it can’t be seen except by what it does.
The amazing Olympic athletes have me thinking about this in a new way: What do we do purely for the love of something? For them, it is for the love of their sport.1
Pure love perseveres. It overcomes odds. Unfettered, it blurs boundaries, pushing beyond human capacity. Once kindled, that love catches fire and spreads. It smiles in victory or defeat. It’s glad for the other, even in its own disappointment, even if the other takes the gold.
What a wonderful example halfpipe snowboarder, Chloe Kim, gives us of this. The delight on her face as she congratulates the young competitor who bested her is so genuine and sincere. This “next generation” will reach higher than Chloe has, achieve greater things than Chloe has, because of what Chloe has done. With open arms, she welcomes the next generation2 that has come to replace her.
It’s amazing what we do because of love … isn’t it?
It’s invisible yet insists on being actionable.
Grateful for our gifts, we use them.
Grateful for our time, we offer it.
Grateful for our resources, we share them.
Doing what’s needed, even when there’s no one there to see or celebrate or reward us. But what about us? Who is loving us?
We could send a Valentine to ourselves.
Oh, those pink hearts… nope, not on this Substack. Here, our hearts look like this:
And recently my yoga friend Rosemary shared the body’s lesson about love and giving I had never fully appreciated3 until I heard her say it.
“The heart feeds itself before feeding the body.”
It’s what we’re asked to do by that flight attendant who dutifully instructs us to “place the mask over your nose and mouth and breathe normally. Bag may not inflate. Secure your own mask before helping others.”
Now I’m wondering… In an emergency, when this thing drops from the ceiling and hangs in front of me, am I really gonna secure it before I help the panicking child next to me?
Well, the actual human heart beating inside of says that’s what love does. It feeds itself before feeding the body … so it can keep feeding the body.
See the coronary arteries in this image — right and left, in bold print?4 Because they emerge from the aorta (the large pink vessel) first, the coronaries get first dibs on the blood coming from the heart because they supply the heart muscle cells (on the outside) themselves. Those cells don’t get any nutrition from the blood that’s being pumped through the heart’s chambers. In other words, exactly as Rosemary has said, the heart helps itself before helping others … so that it can continue helping others.
So, on this Valentine’s Day, in gratitude for all the love that’s been extended to me, I’m wondering: What do I do purely for the love of it?
And taking my cue from Chloe: Who can I shine the light of this love on who will take it from here?
You don’t get to the Olympic level in a sport you aren’t willing to love the heck out of.
Which, Chloe suggests, is at the root of the spills she took on the course. Pushed by her young competition she was reaching for what she couldn’t quite achieve.
And she didn’t actually understand until I explained the cardiac circulation and heart anatomy. Couldn’t help myself.
The right on the left and the left on the right — which explains a lot about radiologists I know.