Love is Work

Roll Up Your Sleeves

“Like so many other things, people have also misunderstood the position love has in life; they have made it into play and pleasure because they thought that play and pleasure are more blissful than work; but there is nothing happier than work, and love, precisely because it is the supreme happiness, can be nothing other than work.”
Rainer Maria Rilke

Someone once said to me, ‘if you have to work at it, it isn’t love’. My first thought was, ‘what’s wrong with me; if love is easy, I must not know how to do it.’ That is the motto of a true co-dependent, you know, “what’s wrong with me.” But I digress.

Love, in all its forms, is not easy. Love requires sacrifice, and none of us are very good at ‘happy sacrifice’. If you doubt me, consider for a moment all the sacrifices you make for your children, whom you love most in the world. From their first day on this planet, you give up sleep, most of your hard earned cash, your time, your leisure, your peace of mind, your energy…I could go on. You do it with a glad heart, for love, but it isn’t easy.

Then consider your significant other, if you have one, and all that you forfeit to accommodate their wants and needs—I won’t list these because this is a blog and not a book. And even pets; for love of them, you spend a fortune, kick yourself if they get one little flea, trudge miles and miles to give them exercise, arrange your day according to their toilet needs, and burn up expensive vacuum cleaners trying to stay ahead of the dust bunnies they produce at an alarming rate. Love is work.

And then there is agape—spiritual love—what I would call compassion. I was in a Church Council Meeting last night, discussing the crews of people coming from all over the country to assist tornado victims in the clean-up—dozens of them will be staying in our church for months. They will have all sorts of needs that the church will provide. This requires love of a different sort—a more ambiguous love that extends from our natural instinct to help our fellow humans, even if we don’t know them. These folks are giving up their time, energy and comfort to help perfect strangers put their lives back together. The least we can do is feed them and give them a safe place to shower and sleep—but it’s not easy.

Rilke goes on to say, ‘for one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us…’ Love, in any of its forms, requires us to put on our work boots, roll up our sleeves and dig in. It isn’t easy, but it is what makes life worth living.

In the spirit,
Jane