What is the opposite of Love?
It’s not Hate.
It’s Pride.
Pride insists on its own way, and when it doesn’t get its way, it becomes Resentful and Irritable.
Resentment leads to Depression, the inner temper tantrum.
Irritability lashes out at the Weaker, grasping for Pleasure at the expense of another’s Discomfort.
Love also has its will crossed, but responds with Patience:
The Long Breath that allows circumstances and people to exist without forcing an unnecessary change.
Love delights in the will of another, because it knows that there is an opportunity of self-sacrifice and service.
Love seeks those opportunities because it knows that in them lies freedom from Pride.
In that freedom Love bears and endures all things, and never fails.
What does this have to do with you?
Great leaders understand that Love is at the Center of their Leadership.
Without Love, relationships, which are the heart of every business suffer.
Work becomes mechanistic and impersonal.
Life becomes mundane and grey.
But doesn’t Love leave you vulnerable to being taken advantage of?
Yes.
But the Leader’s Love always has in mind what is best for the team that she or he leads.
Love is not overly soft, or unnecessarily harsh.
Love is wise: it knows what to do, and when to do it.
Therefore if an individual impacts the team negatively, Love does not ignore it, but speaks to the negativity, seeking acknowledgment and change.
If the change doesn’t occur, Love will remove the individual, putting the greater good of the team above the negativity of the individual.
Love must be learned, over a lifetime, and applied every day.
Therein lies the Joy.
We have a daily choice between Love and Pride.
Pride comes naturally for all of us.
Love is a work of the will, but it is also a Miracle.
As the Apostle Paul writes:
“I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.
And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
How is your life of Loving and Giving going?
