Love Wins Every Time

When I was talking with a client the other day, she told me she was making a video for an online class and asked me to watch her run through the version of it as it appeared in her mind at that moment. The video was an assignment intended to capture the essence of what she felt was her particular magic.

In the course of the story, she talked about volunteer work she’d done many years ago with kids at risk. One of the young men she was mentoring had gotten involved with gangs. Eventually, he made a series of bad choices and was one of several who was charged with murder. He was convicted, and sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole.

During that time, my client stayed connected with him, speaking to him by phone, writing letters to him, and visiting him regularly, which involved driving for several hours. He took advantage of prison to turn his life around, mentoring others, and earning a college degree. After seventeen years, he was paroled under a special program for offenders who were minors when they committed their crimes. She never gave up on him and was able to see him leave prison behind and start a new life, helping young people the way he’d been helped.

After telling the story, she attempted to define what she felt to be the particular magic she’d brought to the situation. “I showed up” was how she characterized it. To show up has different meanings to different people, so to be clear, the showing up she referred to was to be completely present with someone, with no personal agenda, a clear mind, and a willingness to listen deeply.

There was more to see

I thought it likely there was more for my client to see, so I asked her, “yes, but what did you show up as? She reflected for a second, and then said, “I showed up as presence.” I asked her what was another way to say that, and she got it: “I showed up as love.”

When we really show up for someone, we show up as love, and our words, our actions, and the feeling transmitted are simply expressions of pure love. Showing up as love is the most we can do when someone needs our help. It means our choices and actions are being guided by love. We’re not doing the work; love is. Love is a vastly more effective doer than we could ever hope to be. By simply getting out of the way, and letting love be the doer, she was able to unleash the most powerful force in the universe. On some level, she knew that love could do the job in a way that, no matter how sharp her skills, or how good her intentions, she couldn’t.

More than that, by showing up as love, she gave him a chance to see that it wasn’t just she who was made of love. Whether or not he was able to put it into words doesn’t matter, because he was able to see that he was made of love, too, and that he was connected to everyone and everything by love.

Showing up as Love

I’ve discovered that when I show up as love, I’m sharing the deepest part of me; I’m sharing my essence and making it possible for whomever I’m talking to do the same. This is a feeling people recognize, even if they can’t put the name “love” to it. It makes all of us feel at home, and we gravitate to it. I’m sure you can think of people who routinely show up this way; you may even be one of them. To be clear, the love that person or you show up as isn’t coming from them, or from you. It’s coming through them or through you, and that’s why it’s so powerful. You’re channeling a force far greater than any person could ever muster, but to be extra clear, that love you’re channeling isn’t something separate from you. It’s what you’re made of, and it’s the most dependable part of you.

Put that way, showing up as love, the most dependable, the most essential part of you or me, makes all the sense in the world. Showing up as love allows us to get out of our own way and contribute what’s needed most right this minute because showing up as love gives us immediate access to our own wisdom.

Showing up as love is what allows us to navigate by feeling. Though that may sound intimidating, or even impenetrable, it isn’t, and you’ve probably done it thousands of times. You’re relying on that most dependable part of yourself again; love. If you listen with your heart (which is not the same as listening with your thinking mind) you’ll know what to do. The logic of the mind is no match for the love you’re made of. Love will win every time.