"Love is a verb. Reactive people make it a feeling... We are not a product of our feelings... If our feelings control our actions, it is because we have abdicated our responsibility and empowered them to do so... Proactive people subordinate feelings to values." - Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Love produces feelings, but love is not based on feelings. It is based on commitment and responsibility. It is something that is kept alive by obligation, not infatuation. Feelings come and go.
No one could in clean conscience promise to love another until death did part them if what they were promising was to have loving feelings. No one can keep that kind of thing up forever. But one can commit to doing what is loving even when one doesn't feel like it. And the more one does that for something or someone, the more they will find themselves regularly feeling loving thoughts towards that thing or person.
If there are never feelings, there is a problem with your love.
But if there are only feelings, you don't have love at all.
Feelings flow downstream from the fountain of commitment, responsibility and covenant. But when feelings are the fountain, what follows is fleeting.
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