Good Love - A Valentine

In so many ways it’s hard to be good these days. I don’t mean telling the truth, getting the kids off to school, or being a diligent employee. I’m talking about the really sacrificial stuff – helping one’s neighbour, attending meetings to help the homeless, filling hampers at the food bank. There are just so many things to do, each one meritable and increasingly necessary. As institutions designed to take care of us collectively fall into decline, so we as individuals have to pick up the slack and the wear and tear on us is obvious. We have less and less time for ourselves. Other citizens might go about on their own agendas, but somebody has to mind the store of a community’s quality of life and that load increasingly falls on those already carrying more than their fair share of responsibility.I read once that the definition of conscience is “the voice of the repressed good.” In other words, as we step off the treadmill of good works, a little voice is always there to remind us that more awaits to be done, and if not by us, by whom?As a result of all this responsibility good citizens are growing increasingly fatigued, barely having two minutes to rub together. It all comes part and parcel with an age moving at a furious pace and an inability to come together to solve our collective problems. The more we demand less and less in taxes, the more we have to take on ourselves and we are quickly running out of time to just breathe.And then there is the kind of goodness that transcends all of that and inspires us without any burden. When I was an MP, behind my office was a statue of Lester Pearson, which I used to visit with increasing regularity as Parliament itself descended into a kind of draining chaos. On one particular morning, I had finished my visit when one of the maintenance people approached me with something of a revelation. “You know, Mr. Pearson, I often see you out there from my window, and I’ve noticed that you walk away from that statue with a kind of nobility you didn’t possess walking up to it.” I realized he was right; I came away each time a better person, inspired, and eager to make my world a better place.I write all this because today is Valentine’s Day and I just so happen to be married to one of those inspiring people. Jane is just as busy as I, but she inevitably carries with her an exalted spirit that just does good with little effort. She works hard at helping others, yet it is a light and inspiring compassion – the kind you walk away from inspired and lighter on your own two feet. She is spontaneous in good, joyful in effort, elegant in spirit.As I have aged, I have delighted in my desire to live to help others. I sense no other option in my life and wish for nothing better. But at times I drag myself to meeting after meeting, task after task, and, like so many of us, I fall into bed exhausted. Yet Jane somehow transports herself from event to event because she’s more natural at goodness.  She is carried along by its spirit, elevated by its opportunities and spontaneous to its urgings. I’m the opposite – I have to will myself to it. The task gets done, but not without discipline. In every aspect of this I am my wife’s inferior, and I love it. I live with a person everyday who regularly inspires me the way Pearson’s statue did in Ottawa. Folks sometimes say they are inspired by my speaking or writing, but in Jane’s presence there is no gift or talent required – good just exists.In some ways I must write these words because my kids from Sudan must come to understand why it was that everyday they danced around the house, filling it with laughter, and delighted in being together. It was their mother’s spirit, plain and simple. She didn’t plan any of it; she just responded to the opportunities of life as they were offered. Put music on and she’ll likely be the first up dancing, joined almost immediately after by three young faces smiling from ear to ear. At present they just enjoy the experience, but I want them to read these words someday and realize that they weren’t just blessed to have a terrific mother, but a spirit that hovered over the household, enthralled at just being part of it.The picture in this blog post is actually the exact opposite of our real life. You see me carrying this delightful woman on my back when in reality she has carried me for years – and our children. She has been persuasive in her goodness, making it effectively influential. I have lived in an elevated companionship with this most remarkable of persons, not because she pulled me up, but because she inspired me with her life and I suddenly found myself greater than I was.She gives good love, the kind that makes everything good around her and draws her partner out into a needy world. Think I’m blessed? Absolutely. And I honour her influence on my life. Happy Valentine’s Day, Jane. Thanks for a goodness that soars.