Last week I wrote a comment to Tom's post on new marketing strategies. You should remember I branded our business age as The age of heartware. As I said before,
I have heard a lot about "love" guiding business and passion driven systems, and that kind of rhetoric. I think most leaders who talk like that don't know a word about it.
Love is not passion. Passion is "falling in love" with an ideal. It is related to the idea of perfection.
Love is asymmetric acceptance, that is the acceptance of what is not perfect. That is, compassion.
As Mauss and Levi Strauss showed in their works on exchange, social life is basically an exchange. And the normal rule is for a exchange to be symmetric. What is extraordinary is the acceptance of an asymmetric exchange. And that is love.
I am currently reading a very nice book called True love, by Thich Nhat Hanh. I like his style, because it reflects a realistic mind and a good heart. This is an interesting quote taken from it:
We know well that suffering helps us to undersatnd, that it nurtures our compassion, and that for this reason it is vitally necessary for us. So we must know how to learn from suffering, we must know how to make use of it to gather the energy of compassion, of love, of understanding.
I don't like suffering, but I like the quote though. I think that true compassion is a big achievement in every person's life. It can definitely change the decisions you will take in the future. And compassion can sometimes be nurtured by suffering. But still the seed of compassion should be planted in your heart.