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Love and Happiness
Today, we’re going to begin an ongoing conversation about the importance and power of love.
Love is obviously a subject very present in our lives. When we are in love we’re happy. When we’re out of love we’re heartbroken and unhappy. We love our parents and our kids. Love is the subject of more than half the hit songs on the radio.
As present as love is in our lives, I don’t think we have a good understanding of love. Maybe we’re too familiar with it. Maybe we take it for granted.
All too often we think of love as little more than falling in romantic love with someone. No doubt, romantic love—eros—is awesome. It feels great. It’s exciting. Maybe even intoxicating.
But love is much bigger than that. It includes love for your parents and your children. Love for your friends. The self-giving love that leads some people to sacrifice their lives for others.
Love isn’t just something we feel. Love is also action.
In my blog, The Meaning of Life: Happiness, we talk about the importance of relationship for Happiness in life. A study that Harvard has been doing for more than 70 years shows that the most important thing for happiness in life is having high-quality relationships.
Happiness does not come from money. Or fame. Or social status.
Happiness is deeply tied to having great relationships. And the best relationships are love-based relationships. Loving relationships with your friends. With your spouse. With your children. With your co-workers.
Being loved by others changes us. When we practice loving others, it changes us too.
Not just changed emotionally, but physically changed. We’re biologically wired for love. It’s embedded deeply in our DNA.
That Harvard study didn’t just show that high-quality relationships make you happier in life. People with good relationships are healthier and actually live longer. Let’s flip it the other way. Loneliness, the lack of love, is as deadly as smoking or alcoholism.
There’s more. Babies. It turns out that if you give infants all the food and water they need—if you give them all the nutrition they need—but you don’t give them love and physical affection, almost 40% of them will die. A 40% death rate for babies who don’t receive love. More than half of the infant survivors will have significant psychological challenges.
The simple and yet profound answer for the meaning of life–for Happiness–is having good, loving relationships.
Love is the foundation for a healthy and happy life.
When you understand and practice love, you’ll receive enormous benefits in life.
You’ll have better relationships with your spouse and children and family.
You’ll be a much more successful leader at work.
You’ll have the best chance for fulfillment and happiness in your own life.
Love is at the very core of life. The more you understand love, the better you’ll be at every aspect of your life.
One experience taught me a very important lesson about love and life. It’s make-or-break.
What you believe about love–what you know about love–dramatically impacts your understanding of life.
A Story About Death and Love
True story. I had a friend at the gym who was an accomplished doctor with an Ivy League education. Very smart. Very intellectual.
He claimed to be an atheist, and we had interesting and thoughtful conversations about life. He had a nice wife who I saw frequently at church. It seemed clear, by the way he talked about and treated her, that he was very much in love with her.
So we had our conversations—mostly fun intellectual sparring about life—while riding stationary bikes in the gym.
One day our talk was interrupted by a loud crash behind us. A person working out on one of the elliptical machines had collapsed. The doctor jumped off his stationary bike and helped save that person’s life.
I didn’t see the doctor again for some time. Our workout schedules didn’t coincide. Then we ran into each other again at the gym, and he related something that had been troubling him. You see, the person who collapsed had been trying to kill himself by exercising himself into a heart-attack. And then the doctor saved him, frustrating that attempt.
After saving the person’s life, the doctor visited him in the hospital. Much to the doctor’s surprise, the patient was angry at the doctor for saving his life.
A few weeks later, that person succeeded in ending his own life.
It was obvious that this really bothered the doctor. He had spent his professional life helping people stay healthy. Now he was confronted with a situation and person that contradicted all of that.
Our conversation was no longer fun, intellectual sparring. Now it was real. Hard. Deadly serious. Real life and death intruded on our comfortable, hypothetical conversations and lives.
“Did I do the right thing,” the doctor asked, “Saving his life when he wanted to die?”
He was asking me because he knew I was “an ethics guy” and maybe I had the right answer.
I started by offering that it depends on how you understand life.
If you believe in the Wisdom Paradigm approach to life, then you will eventually conclude that you did the right thing saving his life. In the Wisdom understanding of life—the one underlying all the world’s great religions and philosophies—our purpose in life is to become good people, and find fulfillment and Happiness.
In the Wisdom Paradigm, we become good by doing what is loving and best for others. Committing suicide is never what is best. Suicide is final. There is no coming back to reconsider things. It devastates those who love you. Suicide ends possibility and hope.
On the other hand, if you believe in the alternative—a Postmodern understanding of life—if you really believe this universe and our lives “just happened”, if you really believe that life has no inherent deeper purpose or meaning, that there is no Truth, then you can think whatever you want about saving the guy’s life.
If there is no meaning or purpose, then against what Truth are you going to compare your action to see if it was right or wrong? The meaning of your action to save his life is whatever you want to make of it.
It was an intellectual response to a deeply emotional question. And it clearly fell short.
So, I felt myself asking a different question from a different place. “Do you love your wife?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“That love you have for her, is it real? Is that love something deep and transcendent? Or is that love just a chemical reaction in your brain?”
That was the end of our conversation many years ago.
Now I’m asking that question of you. Is love something deep and Transcendent, or just a chemical reaction in your brain?
Your answer literally makes all the difference in the world.
Is Love Real and Transcendent?
If you are an honest and consistent person, your answer to that question will determine your direction in life.
Stop for a minute and think specifically about those you most deeply love and who mostly deeply love you.
Perhaps your mother or father.
Your spouse.
Your children.
Your closest friend.
Would you be willing to die for them?
Are those feelings that you have for them–those relationships you have with them—are they real and meaningful and deep and transcendent? Or are those relationships nothing more than chemical reactions in your brain?
If love captures some aspect of the Transcendent, then you will be a position to understand and embrace the Power of Love to make you successful in your work, your family and your life.
Is Love Nothing More Than A Chemical Reaction?
On the other hand, if love does not capture some aspect of the Transcendent—if love is nothing more than a chemical reaction in your brain—then you are an addict and a fool.
You’re an addict because when you encounter that person you “love”, your brain releases chemicals and your neurons fire and it makes you feel AMAZING.
Those feelings of “love”—those chemical reactions—create compulsive behavior in you despite harmful consequences.
If you have ever been “in love”, you know exactly what I mean. Those chemical reactions make you go out of your way and do crazy things for the one you love. That’s the joke about love. Love makes you do stupid things.
There is impaired control because love makes you crave the love despite attempts to cut down or control it.
Love creates social problems because love makes you focus on the one you love no matter the social or work consequences.
Love includes risky use—you’ll do whatever you need to spend time with your love.
And anyone who has ever broken up with one that they loved knows that the symptoms of withdrawal from love are terrible.
These are all key indicators of addictive behavior.
If you think that love is nothing more than a chemical reaction in your brain, then you’re a fool because you know that love is false and addictive—and you still do it anyway.
Finally, if you really believe that love is nothing more than a chemical reaction and that there is nothing Transcendent in reality—and you pursue what that means—then you must soon come to the realization that there is no deeper meaning or purpose in life. You are nothing. Meaningless. Hopeless. That powerful chemical reaction called love is just a false and cruel addiction that enslaves you.
That would be a pretty bleak, hopeless and depressing realization. I hope, for your sake, that you are not there.
The Meaning and Power of Love
Fortunately, I think you know deep down that love is real and deep and Transcendent.
As human beings, we are biologically wired for love to mirror, to reflect, the Transcendent.
And when you understand that deep reality, you can see why our fulfillment and Happiness are so deeply intertwined with love. With loving relationships, we find health, long-life, fulfillment and Happiness.
You can see why love is the most important thing in life.
Want to lead a great life? Practice love and develop great relationships.
Want to lead a great family with great kids who have great futures? Practice loving them and teaching them to love.
Want to be a great leader in your work? Love your people and teach them to love too. That’s the key to developing the highest-trust and highest-performance relationships possible. It gives your people meaning and fulfillment and Happiness—and gives your team an incredible competitive advantage.
Want to help lead a great community and nation? Practice loving your neighbors no matter how stupid or irrational or wrong you believe them to be. Practicing love makes you a better person (even if your neighbors don’t get smarter). And practicing love gives your community and nation the best chance to come together for the best possible future.
These are not feel-good cliches. These are the deepest Truths of life. They are straightforward and simple, but when you think about it, are incredibly challenging to live. But that is exactly what life is about.
When you die, the only thing you take with you is how you have been changed by loving others and by being loved by others.
So, do you believe in love? And what are you doing today to practice love? (Hint: Make the list)
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Have a great day!
