Love More

John Ortberg suggests that one of four ways to avoid regrets in life is to love more. (When the Game is Over it All Goes Back in the Box, ch. 9) But how can you "love more"? Can you tell a person how to think more? Or feel more? I understand how you could eat more, read more, or do more, but how do you increase an emotion? Unless part of the key is that love is only partly an emotion.

What if fundamentally love is something more than a feeling? (Bonus points if you just started humming the song.) Sure there is a feeling dimension to love, but at the core, what if love is an action. Something we do as much as something we feel. Then we can actually do something about loving more. But what is more? Is it more intensely? More often? More meaningfully? Simply put, YES!

It may be like a year of running. Yesterday I went over 800 miles for 2009--my second highest annual total in my 49 years of living. (2007 = 840) Looking back at the log, the way I got to 800 is a lot of 4s, 5s, and 6s, and relatively few 13s, 16s, and 25s. In the same way, loving more is a lot of smaller acts of love punctuated by a few more extensive acts of love. If every run was a short one, it would be difficult to get to a record-breaking annual distance. But if I only did the long runs, my body would not likely survive the experience. But the blend of the long and the short; the special and the ordinary; the less demanding and the more taxing; that is what has gotten me to 800 for the year (and probably a new annual distance record in the next week or so).

In fact, loving more may be about the daily, ordinary acts of love more than it is about the rooty-poot nights out, or the trips to exotic destinations, or the jewelry that should be kept in a safe. There may be a place for such things, but they cannot be the foundation upon which a more and better love is built. "More love" is built on washing the dishes or folding the laundry or watching the football game (whichever suits your particular circumstances) far more than on the amount of money spent on a lavish gift.

The best part is that it is never too late to love more. Whether your annual mileage total today looks like 650 or 65 or 6.5, you can add more miles today. Whether 2009 has been a good year of loving more or whether your love has not been much to write home about--today you can love more. So today, find someone close by (family or friend) and do some action of love--something that honors them above you. Something that communicates "I care".

Press On!