Generating Love
The Missionary
The missionary stepped off the plane in the Philippines. It was a twenty-two-hour flight from America to Manila and then another one-hour flight to northern Luzon. The missionary was very excited to ask the people in the small Philippine province to serve him. After all, he deserved to be loved.
The young missionary was bold in his speech. The first stop he made was at the mayor’s home. He didn’t make an appointment, he simply knocked on the door. The mayor was kind and wise. He let the young missionary in and asked how he could be of service. The missionary was very pleased that the mayor wanted to serve him. He explained to the mayor that he was in the Philippines to be served and the people of his town could start by throwing him a party.
The mayor was surprised at the missionary’s forwardness. He explained that missionaries usually come to serve people, not to be served. After listening to the mayor, the missionary decided to teach the old man a life lesson. The missionary explained that God is a God of love. He explained that love is something we feel after people have done kind things to us. He had volunteered his time to be a missionary in the province and his job was to teach others about love. The first thing he was going to do was teach the people about what makes him feel loved. Then he was going to explain, in detail, what his needs were and how the people could meet them. Finally, he was going to set some firm expectations by explaining what type of behavior he wasn’t going to tolerate. “This is how love is administered in modern times,” the young missionary explained.
The mayor realized that he wasn’t going to get anywhere using logic. He leaned back in his chair and thought for a minute. Then he came up with a proposal. He proposed an experiment. He asked the young missionary if he would test his theory out before applying it to the people in the village. He, the mayor, would submit to all the missionary’s demands. He would jot everything down in a notebook and he would follow all the missionary’s orders perfectly. He would even take a week off of work so that the missionary would have his 100% attention. At the end of the week, the missionary would be asked to report on how much love he felt. If the missionary did not feel an increase in love then he would be asked to comply with the mayor’s method of generating love. Upon hearing this proposal, the missionary wholeheartedly agreed. He was certain that he was going to save the mayor from ignorance.
The mayor performed the demands with exactness. He offered love through time, words of affirmation, and acts of service. He met the missionary’s need for attention, food, shelter, and love. He stayed within the missionary’s expectations. The missionary sometimes gave a polite “thank you,” but did not otherwise respond in kind. At the end of the week, the mayor asked the missionary how much his love had increased. The young man sheepishly told the mayor that his plan, surprisingly, did not work. He couldn’t quite understand what could have gone wrong. The honest missionary confessed that although he appreciated the things the mayor did, he did not feel any increase in love for the mayor.
The missionary had agreed to comply with the mayor’s methodology for generating love if his did not work. He was an honest man and intended to comply wholeheartedly, the same way the mayor did. The mayor told the young man about the Cruz family. The couple was in their seventies and their only son had gone overseas to work. He asked the missionary to help the Cruz family harvest their crop of corn. The mayor talked about the widow Lagundi, who was now blind and could not see. He asked the missionary to help her gather firewood for cooking, clean her yard, and help carry water in from the pump. The mayor described how Joy wheeled herself to the market every day on her skateboard because her feet were lame from birth. She made a living selling her wares, and she valued her independence. Last week, Joy was mugged and her skateboard was destroyed in the process. The muggers were in jail awaiting trial, but Joy did not have a way to get to the market. The mayor asked the missionary if he could talk to the local sports shop and ask if they would donate a skateboard to Joy. Maybe they would agree to do so if they put their logo on the board.
Daunted but determined, the missionary set out to follow through on the mayor’s list. He still didn’t think the mayor was wise. “These things do not generate love,” thought the missionary. “This type of thing isn’t how love is generated anymore.”
The missionary found the tasks very difficult, but his stubbornness turned out to be an asset. At the end of the week, he accomplished all of the tasks the mayor asked him to do. He had to hold a fundraiser at the church for Joy because the sport shop declined to help. He was able to buy a skateboard with the raised funds at a competing shop.
At the end of the week, the mayor asked the young man how he felt. The missionary was beaming. He had a glow about him. He expressed a deep love for the people that he had helped. He had not previously known them, but he considered them to be family. He felt a close kinship with them and he wanted to find more ways to offer kindness. The missionary felt a love in his heart that he had not previously known.
Generating Love
Jacob and Tiffany wanted a 50/50 relationship. They wanted it to be equal and fair. Jacob wanted Tiffany to meet his needs. She wanted Jacob to meet her needs. They had frequent conversations about what the other person was lacking. Neither of them really felt they were getting the best from their partner. Both of them felt like they were working harder than their partner. Both of them were holding back a little of themselves because they didn’t want to put more in than they were getting back. In their own way, they were keeping a ledger of the times they were putting more into the relationship than their partner was.
Jacob and Tiffany suffered emotionally. They constantly thought about how their spouse wasn’t meeting their needs. When their minds focused on problems, their bodies’ nervous system generated feelings of anxiety and irritability. They suffered from feelings of inadequacy because no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t meet the other person’s needs. They suffered from feelings of depression because they were not content with what they had. They always pined for a time when their needs would be met. They constantly compared their marriage to others, generating feelings of jealousy.
One day Jacob was tired of feeling unhappy. He reasoned to himself that he could possibly never be happy. Nothing seemed to ever work. He decided that instead of searching for something that would grant the feeling of contentment, he would focus on how he could make his wife happy. He reasoned to himself that although he might not ever be happy, maybe he could make his wife’s life a little brighter.
This change in mindset was just what Jacob needed. The moment he stopped trying to find happiness that was derived from achieving a future event, he felt content with his present state. The moment he started thinking about fun and creative ways he could bring happiness to his wife’s life, he felt joy.
Jacob started giving 100% to his wife. He really enjoyed doing small things for her at home that lifted her spirits. He felt a lot of love when he expressed love. Jacob found himself feeling fond of his wife. He recognized more of her efforts and felt thankful for them. He kept a ledger in his mind of the goodness he had in his marriage.
Tiffany loved the change in Jacob. She started showering him with love. She stopped pressuring him to meet her needs. Instead, she forgot about her needs altogether. She began to enjoy doing things for Jacob. This time, she was not doing them out of obligation, she was doing them out of love. She did not feel drained emotionally like she did when she did things out of obligation. She felt energized. She felt it was her choice to do them. She did kind acts because she enjoyed them, not because she feared that not doing the acts would create an argument.
Jacob and Tiffany loved their new 100/100 relationship. Neither of them worried about getting their needs met. They were both content with the present and recognized the goodness in what they had. They were both getting more from their partner than they ever previously requested. When they gave their time and consideration it felt effortless and energizing. Neither felt obligated. They both felt love as they gave love.
Generating Love Logistics
When we focus on what we do not have, it creates a feeling of discontentment with our present state. The greater the distance between what we think we should have and what we actually have, the greater the discontentment will be felt. This discontentment can create feelings of dissatisfaction and depression.
When we have a baby, we have no expectations for that baby. We feed the baby, clean the baby’s poop, walk the baby, and put the baby to sleep. The baby does nothing for us in return, but we love the baby anyway. At the end of the day, we have waited hand and foot on the baby and the baby has done nothing for us. It is purely a one-sided relationship, yet people very rarely divorce their baby. What they express is that they love their baby more than life itself.
We do the same things for dogs. If our spouse kept defecating on the floor, we would divorce them. When our dogs do it, we tell them “no” and then give them a big hug a few minutes later. Our dog does nothing for us, except give us companionship and unconditional love. The relationship with the dog is a little less one-sided than that of a baby, yet few people would give up their dog.
Love is generated by giving, not by getting. I doubt anyone would read a Bible if Jesus went around demanding that people clean his feet. If the sermon on the mount read, “All of you people gathered here today, should pay homage to me, because it makes me feel good,” the Bible would have been tossed out the window centuries ago.
Ghandi wasn’t famous for the donations he received. He was famous for the donations he gave. Mother Terresa wasn’t loved because she articulated so well to the orphans in Calcutta that they all catered to her needs. Congressmen do not get elected by telling the people how their district can serve them. During courtship, we do not give our date a list of demands. We instinctively know that love is something that we do for others, yet in a marriage we suddenly assume that the relationship is about what we can get out of someone else.
As we go through life, we can experience periods where we are miserable. It is common for a person to assume that their path to happiness is out of reach. The “if only” starts to play out in their mind. If only they had more money. If only my spouse didn’t spend money, then I would have money. I would never be late for an appointment if only my spouse didn’t have ADHD. My house would always be clean if only my spouse had the same standards that I do. If only I could play more video games, because my spouse stopped nagging me. When our mind is focused on achieving happiness by changing our spouse we will continue to be miserable, because we are not likely to change our spouse. Our spouse will change when they want to.
We can stop worrying about what we do not have and we can find alternative ways to find peace and happiness. There are a lot of paths to peace and happiness. People overwhelmingly report that their happiness is found through positive family relationships. We do not have to wait for someone to change before we can generate a positive relationship. We can start generating a positive relationship on our own. We can do this by loving others.
When we love others, we can do it willingly, because we enjoy it, or we can do it out of obligation. When we love others because we do not want them to get upset, our acts of love feel heavy and energy depleting. We then feel resentment for having to exhibit the love.
When we love others, simply because we enjoy loving them, then we feel energy. We feel good as we do acts of kindness. The feelings generated make it easy to keep going.
If we are doing acts of kindness and we grade our efforts based on other people’s responses, we will constantly be disappointed. Our spouse might be having a bad day that day and even though our kind act was appreciated, their response might fall flat. On the other hand, if we do an act of love and we grade ourselves based on our own achievement, we can feel proud of our character development. We can feel the joy of loving another person. We can be happy, even if our spouse is independently going through their own struggles.