Doing It For Love
“Wash the plate not because it is dirty,
nor because you are told to wash it,
but because you love the person
who will use it next.”
This beautiful sentiment is from the amazing soul we once knew as Mother Theresa. When I first read it a week or so ago, I thought “Oh, that’s nice, that’s a lovely reframe for a task most people don’t like to do.” I didn’t stop to really examine what that has to do with me or why it pleased me. So the quote, unused, simply slid into the background of my mind. (Sound familiar?)
I forgot all about it until it showed up again today - today, after having washed who knows how many plates and glasses and whatever else in the interim, with no awareness at all about my motivation for washing them. Just get them clean, it has to be done! (Sound familiar?)
I’m a pretty results-oriented person. I generally have a good reason for doing whatever I do, and often it’s about smoothing the way for something else that is to follow. I wash the plate because I don’t like having dirty dishes lying around. I wash the plate because I don’t want to later delay plating my dinner if all the plates are dirty. I wash the plate because that’s what I’m supposed to do. The only time I recall washing a plate thinking of the next person who’ll use it is when I’ve pulled one off the shelf for a guest and found it still had something stuck on it. And even then, I wash it not out of love but because it’s disgusting to me, and I don’t want to disgust other people.
Obviously, this is not all about the plates (I have a dishwasher, for heaven’s sake!). It’s about how I live my life - my dutiful, well-thought-out, results-oriented life. I love that I create convenience and ease by the intentional way that I do things, and I see that as a form of honoring and caring for myself. But it’s also true that often my primary motivation is to avoid inconvenience and trouble, not to share love. I am often motivated away from what I don’t want, rather than toward what I do.
When I’m motivated by getting away from something, my focus is necessarily on that thing. I am focused on its wrongness, and consequently I see and experience more and more the energy of wrongness. So when something or someone upsets my plan, my order, my way of avoiding wrongness, I tend to get reactive: irritated, blaming, resentful, judgmental, scared, angry. That’s the very experience my thoughtful, intentional plan was supposed to avoid. Yet it’s now obvious to me that those reactions simply would not happen if I were motivated by love rather than by avoidance.
And that brings me to another bit of wisdom, this from the Dalai Lama:
“The more you are motivated by love, the more fearless & free your actions will be.”
I get it. Motivated by love, my fear of the repercussions of disorder would fade into unimportance. Motivated by love, I would experience freedom rather than burden in whatever there is for me to do. That applies to all that I do - how I clean, how I write, how I speak, how I spend, how I listen. Everything.
It seems to boil down to that one simple and timeless teaching, which has been said by many, and in many ways:
“Let all that you do be done with love.” 1 Corinthians 16:14
I think it’s no accident that St. Teresa came around again on my computer screen, and I’m grateful that this time I stopped to take a good look as what that has to to with me. Indeed, it has everything to do with me, and it is changing me..
So as I write these closing lines, I’m consciously doing it with love for you the reader and me the writer. When I leave my computer, I’ll head into the kitchen to greet a dishwasher full of clean dishes yet to be put away, and a sink beginning to fill with dirty ones. Consciously motivated by love, I’ll begin cleaning up and putting away so that I or anyone else coming into my kitchen is greeted by a gift of serenity, freely given. I’ll place love with every dish I touch, so that love is there for the next person who’ll drink or eat from those dishes, whether that’s me, my husband, or someone else. My love will mingle with the food that I’ll place there, nurturing and nourishing as no ordinary dish can do. And I’ll sweep the doggie dirt off the floor with love for the human feet and puppy paws that will walk there next.
Will I still put energy into creating order and convenience throughout my life? You bet I will, I like it that way. But now I’ll do it more and more consciously, with my focus on sharing love. As I write that, I feel myself opening and easing, bringing home the realization that indeed, the more I am motivated by love, the more fearless and free my actions will be.
What about you? Where might you bring more love into your motivation and your actions? If you’re up for it, see what happens when you just lean into it — and please do let me know how it goes. ♥️