Virtue Quest

A many-splendored thing

I suppose Valentine’s day is as good a time as any to talk about lust.

The other day, I was working with a client who happened to be a good-looking woman about my age, and I found myself tripping over my words trying to be witty, trying to impress her, wondering how I could shift the conversation away from professional topics and toward more … intimate sharing.

I also made a greater-than-average number of typos. And I completely forgot about the main question she’d come to resolve. So I had to scramble to correct a fairly major error. And she walked away, doubtless thinking me a fool.

Such are the wages of lust.

The difference between love and lust

The thing about my actions and reactions is that they really had nothing to do with her. They had to do with my response to her physical appearance. That’s the core of lust: it clings to the surface and cannot survive at any depth at all. This is because lust is all about pleasing the senses – both the physical senses, like sight and touch, and the psychological senses, like self-esteem and emotions.

Love, on the other hand, considers the other person first and foremost as a person. It doesn’t disregard the surface or the appearance, but it seeks the fulness of life that animates that surface, that expresses that appearance. Love also recognizes that the other person is looking back, is seeing the appearance that I show. So love reflects the beauty and goodness it sees back to the beloved. Love treats the other person as someone to be served, not as an object that serves my desires.

Love as a virtue

Love has many levels and kinds and degrees. I love my friends. I love my mother. I love my neighbor. If I had a sweetheart, I would love her. These all are different kinds of love, and some loves are “greater” or “stronger” than others.

But what they all have in common is that they seek what is good in the one I love. When love finds something good in someone, it rejoices. When it finds a lack of good, it tries to help or remedy that lack. But love always focuses on the good of the other.

And that takes practice: sometimes, the good in another is not all that obvious. My brother and I are so different, that I spent several years just trying to avoid him, because I couldn’t see anything good in him. For that matter, a spouse’s annoying habit, or a friend’s inconvenient imposition, or even just one’s own bad mood can blind us to what is good in those we love.

At times like that, I’ve found the best thing to do is stop, look at the person, and look specifically for any little thing to appreciate. It will always be there, if you’re willing to search for it.