Generous in love?

If there has been a theme for this week, it would be love. It started and ended for me with discussions on how to improve care and support for those in need of health and social care. And trying to capture what is the essence of creating a quality approach. Now I could talk of asset based, person-centred, responsive, flexible, respectful, partnership based but those kind of words roll of the tongue and don't always connect us with our humanity.

We collect those words to get closer to that seemingly indefinable essence of what enables wellbeing and change in relationship with others. We wonder if its ok to provide comfort in the moment with a hug, to describe someone we care for in terms of friendship, to put another's needs before our own, even if we're not related because someone has told us its unprofessional.

 And yet we know in our own hearts that we want those who care for and support us to meet us as people, as equals and not hidden behind the shield of a title or indeed a uniform. But as themselves in all their imperfections and in that moment of contact willing to meet us as people, not conditions, not problems but in all of our humanity.  As I have explored what enables that in so much of my work this week, I have come to believe that it's about releasing people's capacity to love, in all of its senses.

Of course love exists not only between individuals or in families but in communities too.

I saw it today as people carried bags of groceries down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh ( the tourists must have wondered what was happening!) to collect and disseminate to local food banks. Oh how I wish I didn't live in a country where wealth is so poorly distributed we need food banks to correct the balance. But I'm glad nonetheless to see so many show care for others in communities all over the country. That gives me hope for better things.

So what's love go to do with it? Just about everything I think, don't you?