{"id":822,"date":"2012-02-12T12:25:20","date_gmt":"2012-02-12T19:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=822"},"modified":"2013-01-08T08:08:23","modified_gmt":"2013-01-08T13:08:23","slug":"what-is-love-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=822","title":{"rendered":"Valentine’s Day: What is love? Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n

What is love and what does love have to do with brands, organizations and business?<\/p>\n

Good question. I don’t know for sure but that’s never stopped me before. \u00a0Plus the Sunday lesson this morning was love and we’re closing in on Valentine’s Day. \u00a0I got inspired.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>At the risk of violating rules for both civil and faith-based discussion in post-modern society I thought I’d try and answer the question by combining Christian scripture, secular business principles and a bit of humor. \u00a0And to make the risk greater, I’ll use one half of perhaps the best known verse of scripture , John 3:16. \u00a0For those averse to matters of faith and religion, don’t worry. \u00a0 No\u00a0moralizing. \u00a0I just hope you’ll still find something here that you agree with and find mildly insightful.<\/p>\n

With that, here’s part one of three.<\/p>\n

John 3:16 starts: “For God so loved the world …”.<\/p>\n

Such a simple statement. \u00a0God loved the world. \u00a0Actually, John wrote “so” loved the world which I’ll interpret to mean that He loved it a lot. \u00a0What does that tell us about nature of love?<\/p>\n

For me, it is this: \u00a0Love is a decision.<\/p>\n

Love is not something that happens to you. Love is something that you make happen to yourself and others. It is not an emotion, feeling or phase in your life for relation. \u00a0It is a decision you make. I think what John is saying is that God “decided” to love the world. \u00a0Some may challenge that and say, “Hey, Jerry, the world’s a pretty awesome place! \u00a0God just fell in love with it!” \u00a0Maybe it went something like this:<\/p>\n

“Oh! \u00a0Look at that pretty little blue place that I made! \u00a0It is so cute and adorable. \u00a0Everything there is so beautiful and lovely. \u00a0It is my favorite vacation spot. \u00a0The people are so nice.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t think so.<\/p>\n

Sure, we’ve got the Grand Canyon and all. And there are a lot of very wonderful people in the world. But peel back the layers of our planet earth – the world – and the place is pretty terrifying.<\/p>\n

Animal world? Check out a NatGeo video of some tiger methodically stalking, catching and bloodily piece-by-piece tearing apart the flesh of a baby zebra while it writhes in pain. You can have all the Disney talk you want romanticizing the ‘circle of life’ stuff, but in the real world what you’re really talking about are animals savagely stalking and eating each other. \u00a0 Nature = strong eat the weak. \u00a0Fascinating, yes. \u00a0Even beautiful? \u00a0Perhaps. \u00a0Something that you’d decide to love? \u00a0Not so much.<\/p>\n

Then turn to the world of people. \u00a0Sure there are some nice people out there. \u00a0You and me, right? \u00a0But even we do some horrific things. \u00a0Here’s a test. Take two perfectly wonderful, pleasant, well-behaved and lovingly adorable three year olds. Put them together on the floor in a room. \u00a0Now set evenly between them a very cool toy to share. Stand back and watch. \u00a0Trust me. It is going to get ugly in a hurry. \u00a0Within five minutes, screams. \u00a0Within ten, grabbing, biting, and gouging. \u00a0Anyone who has had children will confirm this. \u00a0 And as for adults and all our own private neurosis and objectionable behaviors? Let’s not go there. No, people can be pretty hard to love. Even the ones that on the outside seem nice.<\/p>\n

And nature? Forget about it! For every beautiful sunset and mild ocean breeze there’s a Jakarta tsunami and Hatian earthquake. Nature may be a lot of things but three things it totally lacks are compassion, forgiveness, mercy. No, nature is about as far away from love as you can get.<\/p>\n

No. I’m thinking that what John was writing about was a clear, concious decision by a God to love the world. However it was, love was a decision. \u00a0It was a choice. \u00a0It is not something that happened\u00a0 \u00a0It is something that was made to happen.<\/p>\n

So what in the world does any of this have to do with brands and business?<\/p>\n

Think of it this way.<\/p>\n

Loving your employees or loving your customers does not just happen. \u00a0In business, love does not come naturally. \u00a0Sometimes employees and customers can be a handful (remember the story of the three-year-olds?). \u00a0If you’re going to really care about what you do and who you do it with – I mean REALLY care about them – it is going to be something that you’re going to have to decide to do. \u00a0If you wait for it to happen, it won’t. \u00a0Trust me. \u00a0This stuff isn’t like a scene from The Titanic. Real love, the love that matters and lasts and changes lives and is meaningful – that love is something you choose to create. It is a decision that an organization or brand makes a\u00a0conscious\u00a0effort to act upon.<\/p>\n

Companies that are consistently voted as the best place to work have DECIDED to be the best place to work. \u00a0Companies that have the most ardent and loyal customers have DECIDED to show their customers respect, affection and support. \u00a0If an employee or customer says they LOVE this or that brand, organization or company … you can bet that long before they realized or said it, someone made a decision that this is what they wanted to have happen.<\/p>\n

They made a decision that the relationship they were building was not just based on making the most money, getting the cheapest price, or being a matter of convenience. \u00a0It was going to be more than that.<\/p>\n

Love doesn’t just happen. \u00a0Love is a choice.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow: \u00a0love is a verb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is love and what does love have to do with brands, organizations and business? Good question. I don’t know for sure but that’s never stopped me before. \u00a0Plus the Sunday lesson this morning was love and we’re closing in on Valentine’s Day. \u00a0I got inspired. At the risk of violating rules for both civil…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[28],"tags":[155,116],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=822"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":985,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions\/985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}