Where Does Love Rank in Your Life – Today?

Mini-Love-Lesson  # 273

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson is about exploring where love ranks in your life with a number of different, intriguing questions and the significance of those explorations being more valuable than the answers you arrive at, although they are good too.

Why Care About How You Rank Love?

Let me suggested that exploring questions about yourself and love is likely to help you get more love balanced, love satisfied and love potent even if you do not get final answers to the questions.  Once it was said that “the unexamined life is not worth living”.  While that may be a bit extreme, the concept applies to love and to yourself.  One of the best ways to explore yourself and a topic is with the use of relevant questions.  So, let’s play around with some self-exploration questions concerning love and you (see “Thinking Love to Improve Love”).

How Can You Tell What’s Most Important?

Most people agree that love is important but how important?  Is it identified and measured by what you spend the most time on or apply the most energy into?  For lots of people that would mean something like work, business, making money, wealth, economic power, and that sort of thing, would be the most important thing in their life.  Another standard that we use for what is important is what makes you happy?  For some it could be making others envious, status, popularity, fame and the like.  For still others it might be sports, art, music, nature, etc.

Then there are those who value most being productive, creative, or contributory.  For many, ranking highest in importance are a heartmate, their family, their children and/or their deeply loved friends.  Doing good, justice, democracy, peace, freedom, equality, ecology, and universal well-being all rank extremely high.  Then there is love itself. In relation to all these things just mentioned where does love rank with you? (see “Thinking about Love, How Good Can Yours Get?”).

Some think that the real measure of what is important to you is what will hurt the most to lose.  Others think that it is not until you start to lose that which is most important that you, that you begin to value it much more highly.  Health or a dearly beloved one are examples.  Lately, a vast number of people the world over have been re-evaluating what actually is important. That is because they have lost, or nearly lost, someone due to the pandemic.  Whatever they were putting their life energy into has become ranked rather lower than it was before the virus.  Lots of those now see love and love relationships ranking quite a bit higher. Link “Is Love the Most Important Thing in the Universe?”

Lip Service Love

In several philosophies, quite a few religions and a number of approaches to mental health, the high importance of love is stressed.  Unfortunately, no small number of those disciplines do not seem to accurately have much to say or do concerning the actual how-to’s of love.  They seem only to give it a fair amount of lip service.  I have often wondered why seminaries have so much to teach about faith and so little to teach about love.  That also is true of most of the behavioral sciences even though really good research is mounting concerning love.  I am heartened to say that Russia, somewhat surprisingly, is now the only country I know of in which some of the universities have degree programs in Loveology (see “Is There Really a New Field Call Loveology?”).

There are organizations providing courses, seminars and workshops focusing on love.  However, many are not relying on the new, well researched, wonderful and exciting knowledge about love.  They are often really about sex, or just improving bad communications or parroting the same old same old myths and hunches about love, and/or are just giving love lip service.  However, there are others that are quite good.

So, now please ask yourself this question.  Do you give the importance of love lip service and not too much else?  I suspect because you are reading this, the answer is no.  You are really delving into the subject of love by reading this and perhaps by reading other mini-love-lesson at this site.  If I am right – good for you!

Ranking the Kinds of Importance...

There are different kinds of importance.  There is immediate importance, pervasive importance, circumstantial importance and others.  Different things rise and sink in importance as life goes on.  For many people, if love is important at all, it is in the pervasive category that is taking somewhat of a backseat to the things of immediate importance.  It becomes of immediate and even extreme importance only when something goes very wrong in a love relationship. Unfortunately for many, then it is too late.

Love disasters and catastrophes are best handled like other emergencies before they arise.  Those who learn a lot about the how-to’s of doing love healthfully tend to be the ones who best avoid the love tragedies that afflict so many couples, families, parent/child relationships, friendships and the positive relationship with oneself.

For you personally, is it more important to love or be loved?  Is love something you hope to get around to later, after you handle X, Y or Z?  For you, does love have a spiritual importance?  Who or what do you love that might be important enough to give your life for?  Who or what is important enough to spend your life loving them or it?  Are you important enough to yourself to spend your life loving yourself as you love others?  Is it important to you to not only love but to love well?  For you and your life  – which kinds of importance are involved in each of those questions?

Are Some Aspects of Love More Important to You Than Others?

Which aspects of love are most important to you is another question worth considering.  Is feeling love, lovable or loving the more important aspect to you?  Is doing love or feeling love of more major importance?  In your life, what do you think is the significance of this statement, “Feeling love comes to us naturally. Doing love takes learning, practicing and then learning some more – always.”.  How about this statement, “Love is not an emotion but it can cause at least 100 different emotions.  Do you know them?”

Here is a big question.  Are you really ranking love important enough to learn how to do love well, practicing it to constantly improve and strengthen it, so as to take care of life’s big love challenges when they arrive in your life?

Well, there are a bunch of the questions you can explore and work with to understand where you are with love in your life and then, perhaps, even re-explore.  I suggest, it is the exploring that likely does you more good than finding the answers.

One More Thing

Who might you ask these questions to and talk them over with?  Doing that sort of thing can lead to amazing mutual explorations.  Discussion may add quite a bit to what you understand, can use and also enjoy talking about.  If you do that with one or more others, please mention this site and its many mini-love-lessons. Thank you.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question: Are you having fun pondering the many puzzlements of love?