Let’s talk about love. Personally, I think it’s one of the most complicated yet beautiful things in the world. Love can be so many different things to so many different people – romantic, platonic, familial, and more. The Bible used 8 words for love.
Loving someone requires effort, patience, understanding, and compromise. It means accepting someone for who they are while also recognizing we all have flaws and imperfections. At times, it might require forgiveness or sacrifice or even distance if necessary. But ultimately, I believe that genuine love brings out the best in us as human beings – it inspires us to be better versions of ourselves and reminds us of the incredible capacity we all have to care for one another.
Transcript generated by TinyWow.com:
Hey everybody, welcome back to Mac and Mike. I’m Mike and that’s Mac. I’m Mac. He’s Mike.
And today we decided to talk about a subject that Mac and I have talked about a hundred
times between ourselves and that’s the subject of love. And we may come at this in multiple
directions, you know, of course we’re both Christians. So the Bible has a lot to say about
love. But we’ll also try and approach it from a secular point of view too because we know
not everybody can relate. So one of the things that we started talking about in the back porch
was on the religious sense that Mac often says that you can’t truly have love without a religious
relationship with God because the Bible teaches us that God is love. And while that’s true,
I heard an old preacher once say something that made sense to me, that you can have happiness
that’s based on happenings. But there’s a word Mac and I agree we haven’t heard much of since
we were a kid and that’s the word joy. The Bible talks about earnest content, you know, a sense
of peace that we can only experience with God. And the basis of that peace is love. And of course
scripture also says there are three things that remain forever. Faith, hope and love and the
greatest of these is love. So Jesus also mentioned, you know, about the people that don’t believe
that they also love their children. And what son that asked for bread, the father would give them
a rock. So or, you know, ask for a fish would give them a snake. So, you know, it’s something we can
all relate to is the subject of love. And you had a lot of thoughts on this Mac. So take her away.
Love is the most powerful thing that exists. Love is more powerful than in nuclear explosion.
Love is more powerful than the greatest army in the world. And people question me when I say that,
but love makes men heroes and it makes women angels. And believe me, there’s a difference between men
and women. I don’t care what anybody says. When I in the military, when when one soldier jumps on a
about to explode, hand grenade, he does that for love. He doesn’t do that because he wants to die.
He does that because he loves the people that he’s there with. He loves his brothers that he’s
fighting with. Love does that. And despite, you know, it built into the human DNA at the most,
at the base level is the desire to to survive, right? Yeah, men do that. They jump on hand grenades
or they or they do things super human efforts to save their brothers lives. And there’s many
stores in that military in all branches. It’s just it’s just a fact. What is it that drives
a man to do that? The word is love. And you know, Mike mentioned that in the Bible, in John’s gospel,
it says God is love. And I don’t want to get all Bible on people in case you’re not religious and
you don’t believe in the book. But that’s a very almost impossible to understand sentence.
It’s a simple sentence. It’s three words, nine letters, can’t get much more simple than that. God
is love. Incredible. There’s all kinds of ways of love. But I believe that all good things, all good
emotions, all good attributes flow from the word love. If you’re compassionate, where does that
come from? It comes from love. If you give the charity or if you’re charitable with somebody,
where does that come from? It comes from love. All these good emotions, all these good things
emanate from love. And you know, Mike and I get into this argument all the time, not an argument,
there’s a nuance difference. I truly believe that a human being cannot be happy without God.
And I think that God, that whole sentence in the Bible, God is love. I think that the human
being needs love in order to, and when people talk about being happy, you know, I said to Mike,
human beings can’t be happy without God. You know, if you have enough money, you can buy
yourself a new Mercedes or a new yacht or brand new house, big beautiful house bigger than anything
any nice clothes, great food, go on trips, go to rest expensive, rest of, is that happiness?
Or is that a short term pleasure that only exists in a relatively short period of time in the
human condition? Is that truly happiness? You know, I love my wife. We got a divorce. She did some
things that really terribly hurt me. But she’s passed now and I miss her and I love her still.
I had a relationship with a couple of young women after my wife’s passing. And in a way, I loved
them. None of those relationships turned out to be long term relationships. We became friends
more than, and isn’t friends another version of love? I mean, if you extend yourself in friendship
to someone, whether that’s spending time with them or trying to make them happy or buying them gifts,
isn’t that a way of demonstrating that there’s a portion of love in there? Is that what motivates
you to do that? My son, I had a handicap son. My son Jeffrey could neither speak nor was able to
communicate in various forms. We tried different ways of teaching him to communicate. But my son
Jeffrey, even though he couldn’t express it, was all about love. He didn’t harbor any negative
emotion. There was no jealousy in Jeffrey. There was no hate in Jeffrey. There was no, you know,
there were none of the negative emotions that go along with human being a human. Now, on the
other hand, he never got to go to a school prom. He never got a chance to love a woman. He never
got a chance to do many of the things that we human beings consider to be typical kinds of
caring, feeling for others. But Jeffrey was very solidly loved. And he showed that love in both
verbal or nonverbal ways. But, you know, in the way that he would hold your hand or the way that
when you were sitting in the couch, he would scoot himself over towards you so that he was touching
you. And the way that he smiled whenever you were helping to meet, when you would do something
for him, the smile that he gave you, recognizing that he was pleased with what was going on.
That’s love. That’s unadulterated, unvarnished, pure love. And it’s rare that we find that in
society where we don’t have to give something in return for that. You know, again, getting a
little bit religious, you know, Jesus Christ died on the cross because he loved all of us. You and
me both. He died so that the gates of heaven would be opened. And we would have an opportunity to
spend eternity in heaven rather than some other place. And that’s love when, you know, when you
do something for someone else, especially someone who cannot repay you, in light kinder in another
way, that’s love. You can call it, you can use all the words you want to use around it, you know,
you don’t have to say the word love if you don’t want to. But the truth is, is that all of those good
emotions emanate from love. When you show kindness, where does that come from? It comes from love.
Where did you learn love? You know, another thing Mike, we were talking about is
what do you have to be careful of, right? If you’re showing all of these positive
emotions to other folks, what do we have to be careful of? We have to be careful that we’re
loving ourselves, right, that we’re making sure that we’re okay. Because if we’re not okay,
we can’t help anybody else. And you had a very interesting experience with the Veterans Group,
right? Yeah, the VA now has mindfulness meditation classes through a Zoom-like application.
And I started going down that road with them. I’d use mindfulness in the past to help with other
things. So I thought I’d join this group and try and get reintroduced. Well, one of the things they
talked about was loving yourself and loving kindness. And during the meditation, you know,
you’re supposed to think about people you love, and it could be more than one person.
And it’s just sort of like positive vibes. Well, what struck me as a man is we have a hard time
loving ourselves or at least acknowledging it. And there’s about six other men in the group,
and they’re all nodding their heads when I said, you know, I can have all this love for other people
and finally dawned on me that, yeah, if I can give this, it’s okay to love myself. But
that still sort of makes me cringe to say love myself because now our job is not to love myself.
My job is to love you. It’s sort of the thing. And I guess when when I was in a meditation long
ago, this guy asks the question, who are you and what do you want? And I’ve mentioned this before.
Now I’ve been reticent to say what comes to my mind, which will be different to everyone. You’ll
have your own answer. But I guess I may as well say it because immediately without hesitation,
what came to me is, I am a conduit of God’s love to my fellow man. What do I want to be? I
want to be a conduit of God’s love to my fellow man. So what I’m loving other people,
I think it’s because I know God loves me. I don’t have to love myself because God loves me.
That’s enough. And then I can just channel that right through to other people.
That’s just my thought. Yeah. But you do have to take care of yourself because if you’re not
well and happy and good, then you can’t help other people. And that was a lesson my father
taught me when I was very young, you know, because I tend to be happy when I’m giving somebody, you
know, in Christmas time, I’m always happier giving the gift and receiving the gift. The giving is
much more important to me. But you must take care of yourself in order to be able to take care
of other people. I think that, you know, somebody asked me a similar question, you know,
who are you? What do you want? Somebody, somebody asked me the question is,
you know, what’s most important to you? How are you living your life? And my response,
similar but different than yours, my response was to live a life that allows my soul to live in
happiness for eternity. Because I believe that a human being has a soul, I think that’s the
difference between the animals and human beings that that differentiates us. You know, our soul
is eternal. Our body, our life here on earth is relatively short and I blink really in all of
the time of eternity. So, you know, I think that when you talk about living a life that allows your
soul to be happy, my phraseology, my terminology, without love, that’s not possible.
I, one of the things that makes my life meaningful is the time that I spend with my
children and grandchildren. And I always make even my father, also member of my family,
I make it a point to give my father a hug on a daily basis. I find some excuse some reason
to wrap my arms around him telling them I love him because he’s 95 years old and he’s at the
end of his life. I don’t know how much longer he has. He can outlive me. That’s entirely possible.
But same thing with my kids and grandkids. I don’t go near my grandchildren without insisting
that they give me a hug. And most of them, to be honest with you, they’re used to it and as
soon as they see me, they run to me to give me that hug. And I think that physical touch and that
show of emotion, you know, one of the games I play with my grandkids all the time is I asked
them a question, who loves you? And the answer that I’m looking for and that they’ve learned,
it’s now almost a rote response, who loves you, big pap does. So, and I always tell them that’s
the right answer. Obviously they’re well loved by their parents and other members of the family,
et cetera. But the answer I’m looking for is to reinforce the fact that I love them and that
they’re important to me. And then I care for them. And I don’t know that everyone is like that.
And I think that those people that miss out on that part of the equation of human relationships,
because I know a lot of people, Mike, they don’t care about other people. You know, you’re talking
about men and how we feel about ourselves. You know, I think a guy generally thinks
from the time we’re at 17, 16, we’re indestructible, and we can do anything. And we’re willing to
take whatever burden we need, whatever extra burden we need, so that others will be okay,
because we know our limits, we know our capabilities, and we’re absolutely certain that we can
bear that burden, you know, that we can do that. That’s not sometimes
it’s not egotistical and it’s not not narcissist to believe that you are strong and capable and can do,
you know, the limits of your capabilities. But I do know people who don’t love other people,
don’t care for them that there’s something missing in their character that they don’t have that
quotient for absolute love in the various in many ways in which it’s shown, you know, kindness
and charity and all those other things that we’ve already talked about. Do you ever think about
that? What happens to those people or how they get that way? Well, having a background in psychology,
I guess you could almost see it as a it’s probably a personality defect that somebody’s born with.
We have psychopaths and things like that. They can’t help it. They just don’t experience emotion
like the rest of us. So that could be a and everything in the psychological realm is a sliding scale. So
doesn’t mean you’re so bad off that you can’t function in society. And, you know, you may not be the
DSM-5 psychopath or something, but you may lack a certain amount of empathy and
that can be either reinforced through your upbringing or it can, you know, be part of it.
We’ve often said children, you know, they model what they see. Sure. So if you come from a family
like that that, you know, isn’t affectionate, you know, some families are really affectionate,
you know, everything’s hugs and kisses all the time. Others, they love each other, but they don’t
express it physically or verbally. And I call my ex-mother-in-law every Friday.
And she always hears us say, you know, how much we love each other and the family. And it’s like,
see you later, love you by. She always teases because that’s the minimum you’ll say to somebody.
But thankfully, Mac, I don’t know too many people. I know people that don’t love me, but
I don’t see too many people that don’t have love for somebody.
What’s interesting to me is, you know, when you’re talking about the words of some people, though,
you know, they lack empathy or something, but it immediately made me think of the movie
American Sniper, right? Chris Kyle. And there’s a part in the movie. You know, I assume that this
is real, although I never knew Chris Kyle personally. But the psychiatrist is interviewing him and said,
you have more confirmed kills than any other Marine Sniper in the history of the Marine Corps.
How does that make you feel? It doesn’t affect you in some way.
And his response was, every one of those that I kill means I save a Marine’s life. He said,
I don’t take that personally at all. He said, I want to kill more of them. And you hear that
part of it and you think, what a monster, right? What an evil person would mean he has no empathy
for anybody for the loss of life. But then you see him with his wife, right? What’s her name?
Kia or Tyra? Something like that. But he’s such a loving husband. And you see another side of him
that you realize that it’s not a lack of empathy. You know, what he says is what he really feels.
I love my Marines and I love them more than the people that are trying to kill them. So it’s okay
for me. And I think there are a number of cases like that, both in the military and outside the
military. And then there are some really crazy people who have no empathy at all. And we know the,
you know, the story of the many and various era of killers that have preyed on other human beings
for their own sadistic pleasure. So we know that that exists too. But I think when you boil it down,
Mike, people oft times misunderstand the word love. You know, they use the word love
in strictly a human emotional perspective. You know, people say, I love chocolate ice cream.
You know, or I love pastry or, you know, I love driving my fast car. I love my beautiful house.
But that’s not what I’m talking about. That’s not the word that I’m talking about when I say
the word love. I’m talking about something that’s deeply felt much more emotional, but yet not
defined as emotional. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a pure kind of,
I’ll use this analogy. I was watching television one time. They’re doing an interview of the
rock singer from, from, from the band UU, U2, and his bono was, was being interviewed. And they asked
them about America. And it was in light of, you know, is America disappearing or America crumbling or
something like that. And Bono looked at the interviewer and said, what is America?
He said, after all, America is an idea, isn’t it? It’s not a country as much as America is an idea.
And that thought, first I was confused by it, and then I embraced it. Because yes,
America is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s the bill of rights. It’s the
guarantees that we have of individual protections for certain things. And I, and I use that with the
word love. Love really is an idea, isn’t it? You know, when you say God is love, what does that
mean? When, when you, when you do something that’s kind, when you do something charitable,
when, when you console somebody who is, who is in sorrow, maybe had a terrible loss or a death
in the family, where does that consoling come from? Well, it comes from love. So all of these good
things, all of these good emotions, all of these good parts of the human experience, all emanate from
the word love. And that’s what makes love so powerful. It, again, as I said to open it when I first spoke,
I truly believe love is the most powerful thing that exists. And, you know, you people have argued
that with me, but I, I stand where I stand on that, on that statement. I mean, I, I don’t disagree
completely. Like I said, it’s a matter like we don’t disagree completely. I mean, you partially
disagree again. It’s, it’s only because what you said, love has many connotations. And we’ve often
talked about when we talk Bible, we talk Greek, original language, they had so many different
words for love. Well, English boils down to one word, which limits the, you know, some people
from understanding the nuances that come like there’s brotherly love, and there’s sexual love,
and there’s love you have for a wife, which is different than the love you have for your mom
or your father or your brother or your sister, your children. Yeah, your children. It’s all,
it’s all different types of a good thing. But see, that’s why we can’t allow those emotional
responses, those temporal emotional responses from a human being towards these other people,
the 12 different definitions that the Greeks have for the word love, love is separate from all of that.
It’s above all of them. That’s a basic idea, yeah. Yeah, as a concept as an idea, love can’t be defined
by the way human beings want to use it in an emotional fashion. You know, I love ice cream is
different than I love my wife. You know, and I, in both those cases, the word love is used,
not inappropriately by the way, but it doesn’t quite ascend to the level that I’m talking about
with love as this large tent that covers all of those good things that we take for granted off
times. You know, I think it was May West that said the first coin of phrase, honey, I’ve been rich
and I’ve been poor. Let me tell you, rich is better. You know, rich is great because even if it doesn’t
buy you happiness, isn’t that what the Beatles taught me? Can’t buy me love. Even if money
can’t buy you happiness, can’t buy you love, it can buy you things that give you that temporal
feeling of, hey, this is better than not happening. You know, like I said, you get a new sports car,
you get a new house, and it makes you happy, not happy as in the core of your being happy,
but superficially happy, you know, yeah, qualifier. And then, you know, I’ve often said we were talking
about charity and all the other things. And you know, for folks out there that don’t have a lot of
money or anything to do charitable work, it’s as simple as a kind word to a cash register or cash
here to a stranger, a smile, a smile, you know, just, you know, my granddaughter even noticed,
she said, pop up, you’re nice to everybody and the checkout, you know, ask how they’re doing,
why do you do that? And I said, because I don’t know what kind of day they’re having and just
for somebody to acknowledge their existence and take a moment to ask them, as long as you’re not
holding people up in line and making other people mad, just take them on, hey, how you doing?
Give them a smile. You know, I’m reminded of a story. There was a great basketball, a great
American basketball player by the name of Kobe Bryant. And I was not a big Kobe Bryant fan. He
didn’t play for the team that I root for and I’m not a big basketball fan. Anyways, but I saw a
quote from him one time that he said that he played every game and in the NBA, it’s not in
common for players to take a game off, you know, this is a mental health day or it’s a physical
break there. Kobe Bryant thought it was important for him to play, to start every game that he was
that he was physically capable of starting. And they asked him about it one time and he says, you
know, there may be somebody in the stands, a kid, you know, a parent, somebody who saved up in order
to buy the ticket to go to the game. And they may be there just to see me play. And he said,
I have an obligation. He said, I have a duty of responsibility to be there in that game. If that,
in fact, is what they came for or what they spent their money on or or or the reason why they bought
the ticket. And I know this is a stretch and I know people are going to criticize this and say
that’s not real. But even that is a version of love, right? I mean, he’s showing love to the people
who bought the ticket to sit in the stands to watch him play because he understood his role in the
game, right? He was a superstar and he was the kind of player that people would spend money
specifically come see him. Now, if he’s playing at home, they see him there all the time. But when he
goes up, you know, to these visiting locations, that may be the reason that they bought the ticket.
See, all good things emanate from love. Oh, yeah. Nothing evil can come from love.
So when we talk about love and we talk about the words in the Bible, you know, one of the things,
again, whether you believe in the Bible, whether you believe in Jesus Christ or not,
this statement has or should have meaning to all human beings. We all know that in the Jewish
Judeo-Christian tradition, there’s 10 commandments. One time during his 30, his three-year ministry
to the public, he said to his disciples, this is the new commandment that I give to you,
that you love one another as I have loved you. And I think that, you know, one of the things that
he talked about to the disciples was, the first will be last and the last shall be first. And his
statement was, his teaching was, if you want to be first, then you get to being first by serving
others, by being helpful, by showing love to those people in whatever their needs are.
And I think that’s a very powerful message. And I think America, once a bastion of Judeo-Christian
values, has gotten away from that somewhat. I think our society has gotten a little bit crude.
I think our society’s got a little bit rude. I think our society has gotten a little bit more,
what’s the word we used earlier when we were talking about that, vulgar? I don’t know. Our
society is less because we don’t follow religiously. And I, that’s not a, I don’t mean that as a double
entendre, it’s not a pun. We don’t follow religiously the ideas that are put forth in Judeo-Christian
values. And honestly, you know, again, when Christ was talking about the 10 commandments and
what did he say? The first is, Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
And the second, which is just as important as your neighbor as yourself. There you go. If we
loved our neighbors as ourselves, then a lot of this discontent and hate and misunderstanding,
a lot of the strangeness in our uncivilized society would go away. And I think that it all
comes back to all of us, every one of us, every single one of us need to have more love in our
lives. Love for ourselves, love for others, which manifest, which is shown in the many and
different various things that emanate from love, that charity, that compassion, that kindness,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I don’t know, Mike, do we beat this up enough? I think so.
I think people need to pay attention. I think we need to bring love back into our daily life.
Not only understand it, but also show it. All righty. Back and Mike out.
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