Love is Paying Attention

In a Valentine’s Day column in the Philadelphia Inquirer, psychologist Scott Glassman observes that we can feel love in many more ways than the romantic, sexual, and familial ones.  “It may be someone comforting you during a difficult time, a co-worker asking how you are feeling, or the warm smile of a stranger,” he writes. “ It is there when your pet is excited to see you or when someone does a favor for you, like allowing you to go ahead in line.” “Love,” he advises, “hides in the small shared moments of positivity each day.”

The key word there is “shared.” How many times are you are so caught up in your own head that you don’t notice the stranger’s smile, or you find your co-worker’s question a little too invasive?  

To really experience love, we need to notice and pay attention. As the brilliant artist and teacher Eric Booth tells us in his book, The Everyday Work of Art, “attention comes from Latin, meaning “to stretch out”; attending is the active effort to stretch out of oneself. This effort costs us something.”

But we get so much in return!

Paying attention is how we experience revelations while listening to a great piece of music for the umpteenth time. (Beethoven lovers will have this chance with next season’s celebrations of his 250th).   

By paying close attention, scientists are even recognizing that animals have a conscious inner life, according to Ross Andersen’s fascinating piece in The Atlantic. “For many scientists, the resonant mystery is no longer which animals are conscious, but which are not.”  

Paying attention is also at the core of the art of great coaching. At the deepest level, “you listen as though you and the client were at the center of the universe receiving information from everywhere at once,” is how the coach’s bible Co-Active Coaching (Whitworth, Kimsey-House, Sandahl) describes the coach’s role.  

Coaching is a form of giving love. What a wonderful way to be in the world.  Happy Valentine’s Day!