"What's love got to do with it?"
That's the refrain from a (long ago) hit song by Tina Turner.
I thought of that as I watched my children duking it out — figuratively speaking, of course — over whose turn it was to ride a particular scooter. There's one for each child, but Dad and I never actually "assigned" them (big mistake — duh), and now it's too late.
So, there they were scrapping over one of them, for no other reason than the other child wanted it.
What does love have to do with it?
Everything. Only, here's the problem. In today's language, "love" means a gooey warm feeling toward another. So, as the children were fighting, if I were to say, "Do you feel love toward each other right now?" I'd probably get a big fat "NO!" in unison.
But the proper meaning of love really isn't warm or romantic feelings, as wonderful as those are. The proper meaning of "love" is a more ancient, even biblical one, meaning to be committed to another, to doing good unto that other, regardless of any feelings involved at the moment, and regardless of whether the object of that love even deserves it at the moment.
I've been talking about that lately with my kids. I don't ask them, "Do you feel loving toward your sister right now?" I ask them, "Are you showing love toward your sister or brother right now? Are you committed to doing good to them even if you don't 'feel' like it?"
I'm trying to teach them that love is action.
So, when it comes to things like the scooter, sometimes I'll step in and say, "That toy is a lot less important than your relationship as sisters. I want you to show love to each other right now and work it out."
When the answer "I'm trying" comes back through two sets of tightly clenched jaws, I'm not naive enough to think the lesson has gotten through. But hopefully, it's a start.
Feelings come and go, but true love, a commitment to another instead of ourselves, perseveres.
Unfortunately, our culture revolves around "feelings" of love as the be all and end all. So, in marriage, if I don't "feel" in love with my spouse, I'm out of here! But what about nurturing that sense of love, being committed to doing good unto another regardless of the whims of the moment? It used to be well understood that a feeling of romantic love couldn't sustain a marriage over a lifetime, and so there was a need for a legal contract.
Now, the contract is deemed meaningless if romantic love does not flourish every moment.
So people rob themselves of the opportunity to experience "true love" — the joy of a sustained commitment to another, not ourselves.
Hey, I love being "in love" with my husband, but even that term has taken on a much deeper and more satisfying meaning for me than it did when we married 17 years ago.
The notion of love is so corrupted in our culture. Look at any woman's magazine or television show. We've come to believe, as the Righteous Brothers put it in a hit song long ago, that if "you've lost that lovin' feeling"' then that means you've lost love.
But of course there are many times when we ourselves are not being particularly "lovable." Don't we want to believe, to know, that others who are committed to us, who love us, don't stop being committed to us during those times? Yet, if we are so fixated on love being nothing but a feeling, as we are in our culture, how can we possibly have that assurance?
In many marriage ceremonies, someone will read First Corinthians 13 from the Bible, about how love is patient and kind, suffers long, does not seek its own and the list goes on. Are they really listening? Love is in the doing. Love is putting the object of our love before ourselves, even if they don't deserve it at the moment.
That's what we are trying to teach our kids. To ignore the messages from the popular culture that have corrupted the meaning of love, to understand that warm feelings of love are wonderful, but true love is action. True love is commitment. The marvelous thing, of course, is that that action and commitment can produce a richness and depth of feeling and emotion far greater than we'd otherwise experience.
In fact, the irony is that today's corrupted notion of love has robbed too many people of the joy of true love.
Betsy Hart, a frequent commentator on CNN and the Fox News Channel, can be reached by e-mail at mailtohart@aol.com.