The Tao of Love

Love is actu­ally an action word—one acts lov­ingly. I can­not ‘think’ love, I can only be lov­ing. Now, as we noted two sec­tions ago, love is not a manip­u­la­tive tool—“if you love me you’ll obey me.” Nor is it a bar­gain­ing chip—“I’ll do that, if you do this.” Love is not the hor­monal rush of feel­ing that comes to new cou­ples, and love (as I wrote exten­sively in This End­less Moment, is emphat­i­cally not con­nected to sex.)

So, what is a lov­ing action? Lov­ing action and com­pas­sion are inter­twined. Lov­ing is know­ing who another per­son is, and act­ing com­pas­sion­ately and in a car­ing way, despite what you know or react to.

As you read what I write, I would hope that you notice that I believe that peo­ple are capa­ble of pretty much any­thing. I see a lot of really weird behav­iour and shake my head a bit. And I also see peo­ple step up to the plate and tackle huge issues, turn­ing them around. The lat­ter peo­ple are not spe­cial peo­ple. They are sim­ply peo­ple who do what they say they will do.

I am at my most lov­ing, with Dar­bella, for exam­ple, when I encour­age her whole­ness. Notice that word—encour­age. It means “to give courage to.” Now, I can­not give Dar courage, like I might give her a pork chop. What I can do is remind her, in my words and actions, that I believe her to be strong, capa­ble, won­der­ful, and able to make pow­er­ful and clear choices.

It is also and per­haps more impor­tant that we lov­ingly ques­tion each other. When I see some­one I care about beat­ing up on them­selves and berat­ing them­selves, I will ask them why they are mak­ing that choice. Usu­ally, being reminded that the neg­a­tive behav­iour is optional is enough.

My inten­tion is not to tell them what to do. I do not know what they should do. My inten­tion is to sug­gest that they do some­thing, and that the some­thing be dif­fer­ent from what got them into the mess in the first place. In other words, lov­ing is about encour­ag­ing what works and sug­gest­ing chang­ing what does not.

Lov­ing has a lot to do with integrity. I remem­ber being at a Come Alive in 2005, and a guy asked me to join him for a meal. He had told the large group that he had a his­tory of lying to women in order to get them to have sex with him. Then, he’d dump the woman, and feel both ashamed and proud of his conquest.

He said that, for a decade, he’d tried to change. He said he wanted to be a good and hon­ourable man. He asked me where he was miss­ing the boat. I said, “You lack integrity, and the best you can ever be is a man of integrity.”

He asked me to define integrity.

I said,

“Integrity means that my actions match my words. If I say I will do some­thing, I do it, no excuses. If I say I am some­thing (hon­est, lov­ing, wise, etc.) then any­one will see this in how is act. Words mean noth­ing. Actions mean every­thing.”

Now, this state­ment, and in my ’integrity’ state­ment, was spo­ken with hon­esty and with­out judge­ment. I did not say, “Yes, you are a bad man.” I have no clue if he is good or bad, and I have no wish to be the moral arbiter of any­one. I pri­vately think that hav­ing sex when you want to have sex is a good thing, and there never seems to be a short­age of will­ing vol­un­teers. The prob­lem comes in lying to get it.His idea of being hon­est with women doesn’t match with lying to get sex.

Lov­ing is not judg­men­tal, and it is hon­est. He asked, and I told him what I thought. I did not claim to be right, nor did I try to get him to agree with me. I just answered his ques­tion, and chal­lenged him to live up to his words. The rest is up to him.

Being lov­ing is a per­sonal behav­iour, based on integrity, which has every­thing to do with being hon­est, forth­right, com­pas­sion­ate and non-judging. It can­not lack any of those fea­tures and be loving.

If you are not hon­est, you are out of integrity, and there­fore are lov­ing nei­ther your­self nor the other.

If you are not forth­right, you are play­ing manip­u­la­tive word games. We lie to our­selves, telling our­selves to drop hints or to be indi­rect, for fear of “hurt­ing” the other per­son. In truth, peo­ple can choose to hurt them­selves with any­thing we say. The real rea­son we do this is we’re afraid the other per­son will get mad at us or not like us. We need to grow up about this one, and be forth­right and accu­rate in our communication.

Com­pas­sion is all about stat­ing our under­stand­ing with­out attempt­ing to wound the other per­son. I watch end­less cou­ples fight, and they do so by say­ing things in a delib­er­ately hurt­ful, non-helpful way, all the while lying by say­ing, “I’m just try­ing to help.” Com­pas­sion is accept­ing oth­ers as they are while encour­ag­ing them to be all they can be.

Being non-judgmental is dif­fi­cult, and being non-judging is essen­tial. I am sep­a­rat­ing the two, as the first is an inter­nal state and the lat­ter is an exter­nal action.

I still con­sider myself to be one of the most judge­men­tal peo­ple I know. But remem­ber what we are talk­ing about here. What I think does not mat­ter. What I do (in this case, say,) does mat­ter.

Now, some will say, “Isn’t that lying?” Of course not. My ’integrity-point’ about this is that I do not judge myself for think­ing what I think, and I do not fling invec­tive at oth­ers out of some sense of enti­tle­ment or self-righteousness. I have my inter­nal judge­ments, and I own them. I say what will be help­ful and true, with­out mak­ing the other per­son wrong, or bad, or dysfunctional.

This is dif­fi­cult because we all want our views to be validated—to be declared ’right.’ Lov­ing action, how­ever, is not about val­i­da­tion, win­ning, or being right. It is about encour­ag­ing another to claim, own and live their wholeness.

Liv­ing lov­ingly is a dis­ci­pline I encour­age you to adopt. It requires focus and com­mit­ment on your own integrity and on the other person’s whole­ness. Any­thing else is just a game.