Love Isn’t Always Loving

Many people who read my stuff know I am no longer a part of organized religion, and some of you may not. I couldn’t grow in my own awareness in that realm anymore, but that is a different blog for a different time. This blog is about Love.

Love isn’t always loving.

What many of you don’t know is that even when I was in the ministry world I mostly funded my family’s needs as a business turnaround consultant. I basically take companies struggling and give them purpose, structure, processes and return them to profitability. I am good at it. That is an understatement. I am damn good at it, because I have a secret weapon I use in every situation.

Can you guess what it is?

I am currently the COO of one of these companies and today I had a personnel issue with a young man I am very fond of. He basically was bullying an older man at our office that has some real life struggles in his life. He is in a bad place, and really doesn’t need any additional drama.

It started as a childish prank that happens every day around offices that escalated to an offense that could have cost both of them their jobs. Twenty years ago I would have fired both of them, but I decided to use my secret weapon.

The deepest component of love is self-awareness, and in this world of perpetual narcissism you rarely see many people who have any awareness. Most times when we do something stupid we haven’t stopped to look at the overall consequences of our actions (lack of self-awareness). Self-awareness comes from the ability to empathize with the emotions of someone else’s experience and align them with a part of your own story.

So I walked this young man through an experience in his own past that I knew was painful for him in his on story, bullying. I know this young man well, so I helped him tie the two experiences together. The tears he shed let me know he was experiencing the pain he had caused. He was forced at that moment to deal with the consequences of his actions, and the emotions were more painful than if I had fired him. Love isn’t always loving.

Remember, loves sometimes does not look like love, but if it comes from a place of love and self awareness most times the ending will be the right conclusion.

Love Always Wins!