It’s tricky when people ask you for favors. With family members in particular sometimes you’re more likely to say ‘yes’ when you want to say ‘no.’ I had an incident like this recently where I agreed to pick up my grandson from kindergarten even though I always feel like I don’t have the time for it. I wasn’t at ease about my inner resentment. I felt I should either find a way to get rid of my resentment or not do it at all. But I thought to myself, “I know they only ask when they have a great need, and I know this is harder for her with a newborn at home, than it is for me.”
How can we see this incident in light of Frankl’s definition of love?
In contrast to a relationship that depends only on physicality, what it means to love, says Frankl is to see “another peculiar essence.” The spiritual component of love in a relationship is enduring and “exempt from transitoriness” because it isn’t dependent upon physical or emotional states that come and go. “Love is more than an emotional condition; love is an intentional act.” The intention is for the essence of the other person. This essence is eternal and untouched by death. Thus in the concentration camps they could imagine a conversation with someone they loved and feel in this communion a meaning that gave them the strength to go on living. (p. 137)
Frankl concludes that in this experiencing of someone’s singularity, love is an experiential value.
However, I would suggest that his definition of love as an intentional act makes love very much a creative and not just experiential value.
Unlike emotions that pass, simple acts of loving-kindness add layers of sticky glue that bond the relationship. An intrinsic part of the “intentional act” of seeing another spiritual essence is the intentional act of giving on a physical plane.
In the end, my daughter-in-law was thinking about me just as I was thinking about her, and to make things easier for me she asked if instead of getting the three year old, I could watch the baby while she went to pick up her three year old. Since the baby was sleeping I didn’t have to interrupt anything I was in the middle of. I was glad that I could do something to help, that I could at the same time do wholeheartedly and not resentfully.