Issue #149 It’s Easy To Go On A Great Trip, But How Do You Build a Great Life?

Kelly and I have just returned from what can only be described as the trip of a lifetime.

Over the course of two remarkable weeks we travelled across Kenya on safari, both in the north and the south, before making our way to Cape Town. We watched elephants wander silently across the savanna, stood only metres from lions resting beneath acacia trees and marvelled at giraffes, rhinos and vast herds of zebra disappearing into the horizon.

Africa has a way of making you feel wonderfully small. The landscape stretches farther than the eye can see, reminding you that the world is both far older and far grander than our daily concerns allow us to see.

However as extraordinary as the trip was, I found myself becoming increasingly aware that the greatest gift wasn’t simply seeing Africa.

It was experiencing it with Kelly.

Had I made the journey alone, I have no doubt I would still have been captivated by the wildlife, the landscapes and the sheer beauty of the continent. It would have been an unforgettable adventure. Yet sharing those moments with my favourite person transformed them into something altogether different.

It became more than an epic adventure; it became part of our story.

Sunset on the Savanna

One of the unexpected highlights of our time on safari was the simple ritual of stopping each evening to watch the sun disappear beyond the African savanna. Before long, it became something we looked forward to every day.

On our first evening, our Maasai guide took us to a quiet overlook as the day drew to a close. We sat together with a drink in hand as the African sun slowly descended, painting the savanna in shades of gold, amber and deep orange. For a long time neither of us said very much. We simply sat together taking in the beauty of the landscape as the silhouettes of distant herds slowly moved across the plains.

At one point I found myself looking towards Kelly.

She had no idea I was watching her.

After being together for more than three decades, I was once again struck by how beautiful she is.

There have certainly been seasons when familiarity tempted me to take that gift for granted. Yet sitting there that evening, I was reminded that there is still something mesmerizing about simply watching her live her life. The glimmer in her eyes, her magnetic smile, the quiet confidence with which she moves through life and the deep sense of peace she carries, continues to draw me toward her in much the same way they did when we first met.

It occurred to me that attraction, when it is intentionally cultivated, doesn’t necessarily diminish with time.

In many ways, it deepens.

Yet I knew physical attraction alone wasn’t what made the evening so unforgettable. Had that been all Kelly and I shared, the evening would still have been beautiful. It simply wouldn’t have carried the same depth of meaning.

What mattered was that I was sharing the moment with my best friend. A friendship that had been cultivated through thousands of ordinary days (and not a few hard days too) long before enjoying this magical moment.

Sitting beside Kelly, I realized I wasn’t simply appreciating the beauty of Africa.

I was appreciating the beautiful life we had spent more than three decades building together.

That sunset became meaningful not simply because of where we were, but because of who we had become along the journey.

More Than One Kind of Love

What was it about sharing that experience with Kelly that made it so profoundly different from experiencing it alone?

Certainly there was still the attraction that first drew us to one another all those years ago. Catching myself watching her instead of the sunset reminded me that she is still every bit as beautiful to me today as when we first met. That attraction has never disappeared.

Yet I knew that wasn’t the whole story.

If physical attraction had been all we shared, the evening would still have been beautiful.

It simply wouldn’t have been nearly as meaningful.

It caused me to realize that when we use the word love, we often speak as though it describes a single experience. It is one of the limitations of the English language. We use the same word to describe our affection for a spouse, our children, our parents, our favourite meal and even a cup of coffee. Instinctively we know these are profoundly different experiences, yet our language offers us only one word to describe them all.

The ancient Greeks approached the subject differently. Rather than treating love as a single emotion, they understood that it expresses itself in different ways. I have found three of those expressions particularly helpful in understanding what Kelly and I have been building together.

The first, the Greeks called Eros.

Most of us are familiar with this one, even if we don’t know its name. It is the love of attraction, romance and desire. It is what first causes two people to notice one another and imagine building a life together. Eros is a beautiful gift because it awakens us to the possibility of a relationship.

Many people assume this kind of love inevitably fades with time. I no longer believe that is true. While we all change with age, attraction doesn’t have to disappear. When it is intentionally nurtured, admiration often deepens into something richer than youthful infatuation. I do not simply admire Kelly because of how she looks; I admire her for the woman she has become.

Yet Eros alone could never explain why that evening felt so meaningful.

What mattered most wasn’t simply that I was sitting beside the woman I loved.

It was that I was sitting beside my closest friend.

The Greeks called this Philia.

If Eros first caused me to notice Kelly, Philia is what has kept me discovering her.

Over the years I have come to believe that friendship isn’t something automatically produced by spending enough years under the same roof. It grows because two people remain curious about one another. They continue asking questions. They continue sharing dreams. They continue revealing themselves. They continue making space for what David Brooks so beautifully describes as a “fifty-year conversation.”

One of the greatest shifts in our marriage came when I stopped believing I had my wife figured out and began seeing her as someone I would spend the rest of my life discovering. Every season reveals something new. New hopes. New questions. New concerns. New dreams. Rather than becoming more predictable, she has become increasingly fascinating.

Yet even friendship wasn’t enough to explain everything I was experiencing that evening.

There was something deeper still.

Kelly wasn’t simply the woman who first captured my attention.

She wasn’t merely my closest friend.

She was the person with whom I had chosen to build my life.

Thirty-two years earlier we had stood together and said two simple words.

“I do.”

Since then, we have had to choose those words over and over through seasons of success and disappointment, celebration and loss, certainty and uncertainty.

The Greeks called this Agape.

This is the love of commitment. Not a commitment as an obligation but rather a commitment as a choice.

As I shared in recent newsletters, there was a season when Kelly and I came dangerously close to losing the very relationship we now cherish most. What carried us through wasn’t simply attraction or even friendship.  It was our willingness to keep choosing one another.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Over time I have come to realize that Agape is expressed less through grand romantic gestures but rather through ordinary acts of selflessness. It is making coffee for one another in the morning. It is surprising the other with flowers or fresh-baked cookies. It is listening when you would rather be speaking. It is choosing forgiveness over resentment, service over self-interest and curiosity over criticism.

Individually, those moments rarely seem extraordinary.  Together, they quietly become the architecture of an extraordinary marriage.

It is with that insight that I was able to fully understand what had made that African moment so unforgettable. It wasn’t simply the beauty of the landscape, nor was it any one expression of love on its own.

I was sitting beside a woman I still found deeply attractive. I was sharing the moment with my closest friend; and I was watching the sun disappear beyond the horizon with the person I had chosen (and continue to choose) to build my life with.

Attraction had first brought us together.

Friendship had woven our lives together.

Commitment had carried us through the seasons that might otherwise have pulled us apart. I was appreciating the beautiful life those three expressions of love had built together for us.

Love Requires More Than One Conversation

One of the insights I carried home from Africa is that healthy marriages don’t simply require love. They require different kinds of love, each of which must continue growing over time.

That doesn’t happen automatically, it happens through conversation.

Not one conversation.

Thousands of them.

Some of those conversations nurture attraction. They remind us to continue noticing one another, expressing admiration and making one another feel desired.

Others deepen friendship. They are the conversations where we remain curious, share our dreams, reveal our fears and continue discovering the person sitting across from us rather than assuming we already know them.

Still others strengthen commitment. They are the conversations that help us navigate disappointment, extend forgiveness, resolve conflict and choose one another again when life becomes difficult.

The more I have reflected on our own marriage, the more convinced I have become that the quality of those conversations shapes the quality of the relationship itself. That is why David Brooks’ description of marriage as a “fifty-year conversation” has stayed with me for so long.

It isn’t simply that two people continue talking for fifty years.

It is that over fifty years they continue nurturing attraction.

They continue deepening their friendship.

They continue choosing commitment.

One conversation will never accomplish that. Love matures the same way relationships do….one conversation at a time.

Reflect & Align

By the time Kelly and I boarded the flight home, I realized the greatest gift of our journey hadn’t been the wildlife, the landscapes or even the memories we had created.

It was the opportunity to see our marriage with fresh eyes.

Africa hadn’t strengthened our marriage.

It had simply revealed the beauty of what years of attraction, friendship and commitment had quietly built together.

That may be the greatest lesson I brought home.

Extraordinary experiences don’t build extraordinary relationships…they reveal them.

The quality of our relationships is never determined by the highlights we remember. It is shaped by the ordinary moments we choose to cultivate every day.

As you reflect this week, perhaps these questions are worth considering:

• Which expression of love has been strongest in my closest relationship: attraction, friendship or commitment?
• Which one has quietly received less attention than it deserves?
• What one conversation could I begin this week that would help cultivate it?

The older I get, the more convinced I become that the strongest marriages are not those that never stop loving.

They are the ones that never stop learning how to love well.

They continue nurturing attraction.

They keep deepening friendship.

And, perhaps most importantly, they continue choosing one another.

Again.

Again.

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