Where Love Is, There Is the Eye

How do you find, and then continue to see, the good in other people? Especially those people in your life who are particularly difficult to get along with, much less love? How does one love even the seemingly unlovable person? Well, first of all, you have to want to find some good in them. Finding and approving the good in other people is an act of your will. You have to choose to look for the good rather than the bad in others; you have to choose to focus on the good rather than the bad. As fallen creatures, we all tend to be a mixture of the good and the bad. To will to focus on the good more than the not-so-good in others is to open your heart more fully to love. Genuine love cannot take root when you are quicker to see the faults and shortcomings in others than you are to see the good in them.

There is a Latin phrase that applies here: Ubi amor, ibi oculus — “Where love is, there is the eye.” Love enables us to see. Love enables us to see the good more clearly: in other people, in ourselves, and in life itself. Love enables us to see beauty and truth more clearly as well. Adopting a predisposition toward love by consciously willing to find the good in others makes it easier for you actually to see the good that is there — the good that otherwise might have escaped your notice. Adopting a predisposition toward love opens up our eyes, our minds, and our hearts to other people.

There’s another old saying that is also relevant here: “People see what they want to see.” Well, that’s often true. Old sayings don’t tend to become “old sayings” unless they have at least a grain (and often much more than a grain) of truth in them. People do tend to see what they want to see. If people choose to focus on the faults and shortcomings of other people, that’s mostly what they will see in them. But thankfully, this phenomenon works in the other direction as well: if people choose to focus on the good in others, then they will mostly see the good. Resolve to focus on the good in others rather than the not-so-good, and to keep yourself focused on the good you do find in them. When you notice your attention drifting toward their faults, consciously re-direct your attention to the good. Obviously, we need to exert extra effort to focus our attention on the good in the other person when we’re dealing with people we find to be more difficult to love. But like most things in the school of love that is this earthly life, this becomes easier with practice. One of the reasons God places those difficult people in our lives is precisely to help us grow in our ability to love.

* This article is an excerpt from Rick’s latest book, The Book of Love: Brief Meditations

Photo by Marc Schulte on Unsplash