Essential Elements of Love

Loving another has essential elements. Among them are these three: 1) Kindness: a comforting assurance that we are on the other’s side, that we care about the other. 2) Encouragement: a strong reassurance of the other’s own self-sufficiency and strength. 3) Challenge: a loving yet firm exhortation for the other to go ahead and act. Let’s examine each:

KINDNESS. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. To communicate to others that their happiness is important to you is foundational to loving. You truly love another when that person’s well-being is as important to you as your own, not less and not more. This needs to be clearly and consistently shared with the other. Kindness is a sensitivity to the heart and feelings of the other, a seeking to console rather than criticize, to speak the truth in love, toward the end of the other’s well-being—and also the relationship.

If others do not really believe that you are there for them, they will not open to you, they will not let you in. Real connection and communion will not happen. Your loving will be blocked, thwarted.

ENCOURAGEMENT. Loving and encouraging are simply inseparable. To encourage does not however mean to do for others what others must do for themselves. Rather than saying, “Let me show you how I love you by doing this for you,” the expression of encouragement is: “I believe you can do this, and I will be in your corner supporting you while you do it.”

It is loving to believe in another. We tend to live out self-fulfilling prophesies. People generally become what others expect them to become, as they take in and adopt those expectations. We see this clearly in children: they all too often rise only to the level of the expectations of their parents and peers. Therefore, if you are going to make a mistake about another, it is surely better to be proven wrong for believing than not believing in that person.

CHALLENGE. What we all need in life is for someone to exhort us become what is in us to become. In challenging a loved one we say, “Go ahead, stretch, try it. If you succeed, great; if you fail, that is alright too. You will nevertheless be learning. I will be with you regardless of outcomes.”

While we are not responsible for others, we nevertheless need to do what we can to assist loved ones to actively strive to gain and attain whatever lies possible before them. We need to do something most difficult: help them to feel good about being who and where they are, while at the same time encouraging them to continue striving to be and do better. Here “good is the enemy of best”; that is, rather than settling merely at doing good, they must attempt to do their best.

Through kindness, encouragement and challenge, we seek to aid our loved ones to stretch to their fullness and maturity. We do not know what the course of their lives will be; but we want them to be prepared for what may come, we want them to believe in their ability to adapt and succeed. Even if they should at times doubt themselves, our unshakable belief in them might just be enough to keep them moving through their dark night, until a new day dawns.