...love impels people to service. If love starts with a downward motion,
burrowing into the vulnerability of self, exposing nakedness,
it ends with an active upward motion. It arouses great energy
and desire to serve. The person in love is buying little presents,
fetching the glass from the next room, bringing a tissue when there's flu,
driving through traffic to pick the beloved up at the airport.
Love is waking up night after night to breastfeed, living year after year to nurture.
It is risking and sacrificing your life for your buddy's in a battle.
Love ennobles and transforms.
In no other state do people so often live as we want them to live.
In no other commitment are people so likely to slip beyond the logic
of self-interest and unconditional commitments
that manifest themselves in daily acts of care.
Occasionally you meet someone with a thousand-year heart.
The person with the thousand-year heart has made the most of the passionate,
tumultuous phase of love. Those months or years of passion have engraved
a deep commitment in their mind. The person or thing they once loved hotly
they now love warmly but steadily, happily, unshakably.
They don't even think of loving their beloved because they want something back...
They just naturally offer love as a matter of course
It is gift-love, not reciprocity-love.
~ David Brooks
from The Road to Character
