What we choose to love

What we choose to love determines who we are and who we are becoming.

The principle of agency – that you are free to make your own choices – is perhaps the most fundamental in the human universe. When it comes to spirituality, interpersonal relationships, happiness, nearly everything – agency keeps cropping up as a key element to understanding the way we humans  and our world work.

Nowhere, perhaps, is this more evident than in one crucial decision: choosing what to love.

When I say “love” I don’t just mean in romance. I mean it generally – the way Jesus meant it when he cautioned us about what we treasure: “for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

This crucial choice – what to love – is all the more important because it’s one of the most subconscious things we do.  Few of us can remember the moment when we decided to love the things we do. Our likes and dislikes are almost so natural to us that they don’t seem like choices at all.

But they are. And really, to be fair, I’m talking about more than just simple preferences. I may like chocolate ice cream more than other flavors, for instance. That’s a mere preference. Loving something implies something more. It requires making a real space in your heart, in your mind, in your life. Something you love is something you are willing to make sacrifices to accommodate.

To love is to give a part of yourself, of your heart, to something or someone else. It means to care. Most people would probably say the opposite of love is hate. It isn’t. Love and hate are actually opposition pairs (for more on the subject, see my earlier post on hope and fear). The opposite of love is not hate, but apathy: the state of being where you  couldn’t honestly care less. Whether something or someone prospers, does well, lives or dies, makes no difference to you. When you love you are choosing to care. You are engaging your heart in behalf of, because of, in the service of, something or someone else.

The choice to love is thus a supreme gift. In fact, it is the thing of greatest value that we flawed, weak humans have to give precisely because it is completely ours to give. No one can force us to care. The decision to engage one’s heart is truly made independently. And, as such, it speaks volumes about who we really are.

In this moment of agency each one of us, free and independent, chooses what to set our hearts on. This choice is profoundly consequential. It determines who we are and who we are becoming.

This is crucially important because there is so much in this world to love. Much of it is not at all worthy of the sacred space we give it in our hearts. Some of the rest is so worthy it would transform our lives if we would only give it room to grow.

By now I have hopefully convinced you that what we love is truly a choice – if at times a subconscious one. But have I convinced you that what you choose to love determines who you are and who you are becoming? Where do I come off making that potent claim?

Quite simply, by thinking about God and what he loves, and who he is. Job said it perfectly: “who is man that you should set your heart upon him?” As incredible and unexplainable as it may seem, God has decided to set his heart on us. What objective reason is there to explain why he chose, of all things, to love you and me? None. It was simply a choice he made long, long ago, and which he will never back down from.

Indeed, it was God’s decision to love you and me that made him who he is. It was the defining moment of his identity as our God. He is, quite simply, the one who cares. His love for us has permeated his being to the extent that it defines him.

In an analogous – but much less perfect – way, what we choose to love and make space for in our hearts permeates our lives and defines who we are. And it is entirely fitting and proper that it should be so. For we are the masters of our own hearts. The halls of our hearts are inviolate. Not even God will enter that sacred space uninvited. And it is there, from within that sanctuary, that our fate is decided, that our destiny is forged.

Apart from his unexplainable choice to love us (probably the first axiom of the universe), the greatest gift of God is our freedom (probably the second). And with it, we are capable, through this principle, of becoming whoever and whatever we want to be. The sky is truly the limit, for on the one hand we can choose to love only ourselves, becoming small, lonely and miserable; while on the other hand there is the ultimate example of Jesus Christ, the one who chose to care about every one else – about you and me – and who became, over the course of his life, our God – like his Father. If we want to be like him, the path is simple: we have to choose to care about others.

While mulling this over, I imagined a conversation between a disciple of Christ, at the end of his life, and the Savior. The disciple says, “the decision I made to love you and to care about the things you care about changed my life. My decision to care about you and your work changed me and made me who I am today.” And Jesus replies, “yes, indeed – and my decision to love you made me who I am: your Savior, the one who chose to care.”