Don’t you love checking out bumper stickers and personalised plates on vehicles as a means of wondering what the owner of the car’s worldview is? Only recently I saw a van with a Christian fish on it and a tiny little sticker with the words Omnia Vincit Amor on it. Researching its origins, it’s attributed to Virgil, the ancient classical Roman poet, from one of his three major works, Eclogues.
We’re fooled in life if we believe anything different. Love, as a constant response force, is an indelible universal law. We know this just as well by those who don’t use it as by those who do. Love conquers all.
When we, for instance, interact with someone in authority and they don’t exercise some level of love in the form of rapport and respect for the person i.e. us, we feel the pinch of injustice, don’t we? Words are not needed to sense this. On the other hand if that person in authority deals with us in grace and they have a spark of charisma and engagement about them, we actually feel quite special, even blessed. Love is the difference.
We see love’s power every day. When it’s there and it’s used to good effect we are left inspired and possibly even challenged—in a good way.
Love is beyond romanticism. It’s the way of life. It’s the way of engaging actively and proactively with the world. It’s positivity and the vehicle to greatness. No one who’s ever achieved a sustainable level of greatness has ever done it without love firing their engine room.
And we know, of course, that love links so tangibly with faith and hope... we need to have both faith and hope to love, and love propagates both of these too. In fact love is probably the basis of all virtue.
And it is virtue alone that assures our success. Virtue goes before us and prepares the ground. There are no short cuts to real success, no matter the differences of definition.
We choose love and we choose a chance to engage. We choose to engage and we choose success.
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