When we love someone we Pay Attention. When we love someone, we have an Incredible, Enduring, Fantastic Curiosity about then. We yearn to truly understand their minds, hearts and spirits. Sounds lofty, yet I’m talking about the everyday ways a person moves, talks, walks, decides, hurts, laughs. What grabs their interest? What are their fears, their beliefs, their passions? When we love someone, we understand their sadness, or grumpiness. We celebrate their successes.
When we love someone, we Spend Time. We spend time but don’t feel exhausted by it. We spend time as to notice each moment, appreciate each moment. We spend time in a way that brings out an infinite number of possibilities for sharing love, light and laughter in a single moment.
When we love someone, we Listen. We’re talking about a particular kind of listening. The kind where you listen. It’s listening aimed at understanding the heart of another. It’s listening with fresh ears, even if you feel like you’ve heard it a million times before. It’s the kind of listening that waits to digest what you’ve heard before you respond. So that you can respond, and not react. How? By being curious, asking questions and, this old chestnut, making sure you understood what the other person wanted to communicate to you.
When we love someone, we Protect them and Enjoy them. Protecting those we love takes a lot of care. We want to let them fly free, yet not so free as to fall. Yet we know falling is part of learning. It can get kinda complex. The good part is that we can return to loving them, and seek the balance between micro-managing and giving up.
Enjoying those we love dovetails with the protection part. When we protect enough, but not too much, we’re left with how much we enjoy that person. This dovetails with our great appreciation for specific individuals in our lives and a wondrous gratitude for the gift of love.