At the end of a course the other day, I was approached by one of the attendees to share some concerns. She told me that nowadays there are no, or at least you don't hear people talking about love of work. "Once upon a time," she continued, "to say that you did your work vocationally and with love was a manifestation of personal pride; now, however, if you say it you will probably be looked down upon.
Maybe it has some truth, I don't know if it has a lot or a little.
Human beings have two kinds of love: those that can be lost and those that cannot be lost. Among the latter are, for example, affection for the city where one was born and love for one's children. These are loves that, without doing anything, are maintained.
Among those that can be lost, we find, among others, love for one's spouse and love for work or love for God. They do not stand alone. They must be cared for.
At first they dazzle and the feelings are very strong, -when falling in love or finding a good job, or a conversion, for example- but, as time goes by, the enthusiasm fades and one can be more focused on the negative than on the positive. If one does not fight to maintain these loves, to love them, to want them, to put the will to love them, in short, if one does not fight to be free in love - for which one will have to use, in addition to feelings, intelligence and will - it is probable that negative feelings will appear that can prevent one from continuing to love. (see previous collaboration).
Even if the feeling is lost, love is not lost. If that were so, the human being would not be free because he would not be able to choose his loves since they depend on something that I do not control: feeling.
If we lose the feeling of seeing only the negative, life will become hard. It happens in the professional sphere (we focus more on what does not work) and in the personal sphere, we are more aware of the defects of others than their virtues, in our relationship with God, we can be more aware of the costly than to love Him.
These are signs of being focused on the negative, warning signs that habituation is damaging this specific love.
Freedom has a lot to do with living a little outside of feelings.
The question arises fearfully, what to do so that this does not happen?
From my point of view I only find one solution, I sincerely believe that there is no other, and that is to get trained.
Learning. What training does is that when you fall, you get up when you fall. If you stop training, you will stay on the ground. The routine will begin its work of corrosion.
When we live in this way, a little above our feelings, we realize all the positive things in our professional and personal life and in our relationship with God. Our vision will be more balanced.
We cannot forget that in all loves there will be times when we will have to go against the current. Life is like that.
Life is worth living as it is. What does not generate any self-motivation is living as a slave to feelings.
Listen to the podcast "Classes of loves and feelings".
