Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!

What is love?

I’ve been reading and researching to better understand what I used to believe was a simple explanation to an emotion we all feel (or hope to feel) regularly.

Some of the research is captured below:

“We are never so vulnerable as when we love.” Sigmund Freud

In her book, Daring Greatly, Brené Brown describes vulnerability as “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.” It’s that unstable feeling we get when we step out of our comfort zone or do something that forces us to loosen control.

Dr. Sue Johnson writes in Hold Me Tight, that love is “the pinnacle of evolution, the most compelling survival mechanism of the human species. Not because it induces us to mate and reproduce. We do manage to mate without love! But because love drives us to bond emotionally with a precious few others who offer us safe haven from the storms of life. Love is our bulwark, designed to provide emotional protection so we can cope with the ups and downs of existence.”

Simon Sinek recently posted “best definition of love I’ve ever heard: Love is giving someone the power to destroy you and trusting they won’t use it.”

So it seems then, you know you are in love when you allow yourself to be vulnerable, bond emotionally to survive the volatility of a broken world, and trust your partner implicitly. Not a warm and fuzzy description but…honest and gritty.

By now you’re asking yourself why this topic and why now?

•The blog has been my backup when I’m not regularly communicating on another platform. “Musings” were the way one former coworker described them.

•After a lengthy hiatus, my career journey brought me back to this place where I pontificate, share, smack the reader over the head one message and whisper in their subconscious the next.

•”Precious few” as Dr Johnson writes, become more obvious with adversity. I elected to dig into the why behind those who stand by when most are silent or have been posing when convenient but withdraw when needed. However cynical this may sound, if trust is the ultimate relationship currency, most don’t seem to be able to distinguish between certified and counterfeit vouchers.

Have a blessed weekend!

Eric