We learn to love by doing

some non-fiction thoughts inspired by a fiction story

Photo by Filip Urban on Unsplash

“You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.”

- Saint Francis De Sales

Normally, when I tag my friend

Scoot

here at Whole and Holy, it’s to quote or refer back to something he’s written at Peasant Times-Dispatch. However, today I want to call your attention to a piece of fiction he’s written writing: an as-yet-unfinished serial about one Tylus Worran. I’ve been promised that the story is on the docket to come back around sooner or later, but for now, the first eight chapters have been posted. So far, Tylus is wrestling with the question of what—if anything—he owes to his family. He has big dreams, and he fears that leaning into local obligations and community might force him into a suffocatingly-small local life.

What has been published so far is excellent, and I encourage you to give it a read, but I’m referencing this story here because of two lines in particular. Here’s the first:

What I love about this quote is that it reveals something I’ve begun to realize about myself (and, perhaps, about humanity in general). Not only do we learn to love by loving, as St. Francis de Sales says, but we also learn to love what, specifically, we are doing… by doing it. What we are doing might be good or bad, for our benefit or to our detriment, but because we are doing it regularly, we come to love it. There is comfort in familiarity.

Some context: I’m a very change-averse person. As a child, I hid myself in my room while my family cleaned out my dad’s (very) old, (very) broken car before trading it in and buying a new car. I threw several huge fits when my parents first began to intimate that we might be moving houses soon—even after they told us that the reason we were moving was because my mom was pregnant (a hugely exciting announcement for my brother and I).

As I’ve grown up, I’ve become more accepting of big-scale changes like this, usually because I can see the necessity of them for myself. Moving? Please get me out of this apartment complex. New-to-us car? We’ll need one sooner or later if and when we need another car seat. But small-scale change?—last minute switching of plans, new (hand-me-down) furniture, using a different Liturgy of the Hours book?—I can be, in all honesty, an absolute nightmare about it.

So this concept that we learn to love something by doing it, because doing it allows us to know it intimately? That really hits home for me. This has absolutely been my experience—so often, what I love is the comfort and predictability of what is familiar more than the thing itself.

For example, James and I were talking recently about the sectional and chair we were given when my grandmother passed away last year. I had been saying for years that I wanted a sectional, wanted ample seating for company, wanted something comfy to nap on… and yet, when we actually replaced our old living room furniture last January, I was angry. I didn’t feel like I’d had enough time to run the pros and cons.¹ I was frustrated with the way that the rug (that we were borrowing from a friend) clashed with the chair, with the way that our floor space in the living room felt smaller, with the fact that the loveseat we’d gotten rid of held sentimental value for our family and I didn’t want to be the one to get rid of the chair because I didn’t want to be The-One-Who-Got-Rid-of-The-Chair.

After about a week, I realized that I was just struggling with the change, not with the sectional. I was struggling with the perceived implications of the change (and probably a spot of anxiety) more than with the actual furniture itself. Once I was acclimated to the new normal, I could start to appreciate that having a sectional really did fit better with my goals for our living space, Now, a year (and a second baby) later, I can’t imagine still relying on the little three-seater and the thirty-year-old loveseat. The sectional and the chair we have now are pieces I want to take care of so that they last for a long time.

Once what is new becomes the norm, I start to feel affinity (or even affection) for it.

We see this with kids all the time. A friend of mine recently asked our college group chat if those of us with kids had any tips for encouraging teeth-brushing in his four-year-old niece. A few of us chimed in with, more or less, you just have to do it day in and day out until they realize that it’s the norm. At first, there might be tears or silly songs sung through gritted teeth. But once they’re used to it, they won’t fight it. They’ll come to accept it. They may even come to look forward to it. It’s the same with new expectations around toileting, with new expectations around sleeping, with new expectations around behavior. There is an initial period of fighting back, testing boundaries, evaluating what the new norm is… and then we settle into a new routine and come to love it.

But before we get to that place of loving-what-we-know and loving-what-we-do, it’s so easy to start something, get discouraged, and give up. It’s easy for us to set expectations for our children, meet resistance, and shift our boundaries instead of holding firm. It’s easy to plan for a change, feel scared of the personal cost, and never take the first step.

Which brings us to our second quote from the Tylus Worran serial:

Stop and read that one one more time. Slowly.

We cannot expect to always love every minute of something that is objectively difficult and draining and very, very often new. We are learning to love our vocations by living out our vocations. Sometimes those vocations don’t look the way we want them to, or at least the way we thought they would when we were kids or young adults or newlyweds. There is some hypothetical, alternate universe storyline where things are perfect, or at least better, against which we judge the quality of our actual real lives. Often, there are things we would rather be doing: reading, writing, sleeping, traveling, visiting with friends, anything other than cleaning up the third round of vomit in an hour at midnight. These are sacrifices we are making that we do not particularly want to make.

But we are learning to love by loving, and God knows the sacrifices we make while we are learning to love. He knows that we might rather be sipping coffee in a cobblestone piazza in Assisi, and He sees us choose to pick up a dozen Little People instead of hopping on a plane. He sees us growing and stretching and chafing against the irritations and frustrations of our lives… and He, like Tylus’ father, wants us to thrive precisely where we’ve been planted.² Yes, it might take hard work. Choosing to refrain from a sharp word can feel like a monumental effort in the moment. Choosing to find joy in an unfair situation can feel like giving in and letting the other person “win”.

But y’all, we learn to make a gift of ourselves by making a gift of ourselves.

We learn to parent our children by parenting our children.

We learn to be patient by being patient.

We learn to love by loving.

We learn to be meek—”quiet, gentle, and easily imposed on; submissive”—and humble of heart by choosing quiet and gentleness, by allowing ourselves to be swayed or led when our vocation demands it, by being submissive (first to God and then to any other authority figures in our lives).

We can’t always change our circumstances, but we can choose to lean in. We can choose to love what we are learning to know, what we are learning to do and do well. We can give ourselves some grace when we don’t yet know everything, and we can pride ourselves on doing the best we can with what we have. On using our talents well.

Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.

- Matthew 25:21 ESV

Here’s my last thought:

Whatever we do often will become what we love, even if it starts out as a guilty pleasure or a “just this once” or a “nobody needs to know”. We have free will, of course, but our will and our appetites are deeply shaped by our experiences and habits. Any time we are changing what we do, we will have to contend with the fact that we are changing what we love.³ On the flip side, we can take heart and know that not only is growth in virtue possible, but loving virtue is possible because we come to love what we do often.

Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

- Luke 12:32-34 ESV

Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Where your habit is, there will your heart be also. Where your will is, there will your heart be also.

But fear not, little flock. It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

1. Friends, it had been at least six weeks. For a couch. I’ll take “stalling” for 500.

2.

Tsh Oxenreider

said it better than I can over at The Commonplace.

3. This recent article from the lovely

Dixie Dillon Lane

, while not 100% “on topic”, seems relevant to the conversation. Dixie talks about the importance of evaluating the “why” behind our technology usage before making changes because technology can be allowing us to meet needs—to do things we love—in an important, albeit often imperfect, way.