I love many people in this world. There are also individuals I hope to never see again. Then there is a third category: People I love whom I may never see again. Whenever someone new comes into my life, it’s possible they may fall into one of these categories. The first two scenarios are easy enough to navigate. The third is a bit tricky.
At issue is self-preservation. Should I allow myself to become attached to this person? It’s much simpler to avoid pesky things like personal attachments, and emotional vulnerability. If you never care about anybody, then you’ll never be hurt by them. There are volumes written on the subject but I’d like exemplify the concept by pointing out two areas this has played out in my life: work and friendships.
I have trained hundreds of employees in my lifetime. Some were good, some were terrible, and some had that unique combination of charisma and talent. Those were the employees I most loved, and who also caused the most anguish. Why? Because I knew my time with them was fleeting. From the moment their training began it was evident their abilities would quickly take them on to bigger and better things. I would have to see them off, and I hated it. Try as I might, I couldn’t deny my fondness. They mattered.
I have also had many close friends who, for one reason or another, moved away. In the age of Facebook and texting, friends are never truly out of your life but they’re also not always present. They are no longer sitting on your sofa sipping coffee or meeting you at a park to go sledding with the kids. They aren’t coming over for barbecues and can’t meet you for lunch tomorrow to hash out the latest life challenge. They left, and it hurt. It still hurts.
Experience with attachment and loss can make a person bitter, or at the very least over-cautious. I used to find myself holding back with new people. I didn’t want to like them or get too close too fast, because…who knows? They might decide to move away on me (and it’s all about me, after all). The connection we make and the bonds we build might get left by the wayside. Wasted time. Isn’t it just easier not to?
I once heard a man discuss why he turned away from being a Cincinnati Bengals fan. Year after year of having his heart broken had done him in. He was tired of having his emotions dashed by a team that didn’t seem to care enough about him to win. He still loved football, so he decided to enjoy the game but avoid loyalty to a particular team. He wasn’t going to be let down again.
Self-preservation: The easy option.
But there is another option to consider.
Option two is to love: Love the one you’re with (so to speak). Not in a free-love, Crosby, Stills, and Nash kind of way, but in a Jesus-said-so kind of way. Christ called it the second greatest commandment – love your neighbor. We may feel it’s more about loving strangers than people we see every day. It’s easy to love on a stranger once in a while, or to help out a person in need. It’s much harder to let a person into the deep places of your heart. There is risk there. If I get too close to this person – if I love them and tell them my struggles, and share my testimony over coffee, or let our kids get close – they might just up and move away someday. It’s happened before.
If I train this employee and bleed out all of my experience and invest in their success, will they take it and run off? They might even compete with me in the future. Why would I do that? Why would I want to build-up a stranger to succeed when it may end up costing me in the end? Why waste my time?
I’ve come to learn that God places people in our lives for a season, and seasons are always changing. As much as we’d like stability, for the landscape to preserve its initial glow, and for the music we love to play on indefinitely, it’s not reality. It will change. It needs to.
Today we have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others. We are asked to gear up and risk the heartache. We have a choice whether or not to engage with others or mind our own business. If we choose the former, we might get burned. We might fall in love with people who could care less. Those we get close to might move on and never come back. Will we love them anyway?
Love the person in front of you, and then love the person behind them, and behind them. It’s hard – so hard, but which is harder: Loving everyone, or never loving again?