Story #031
Agapé: The Crown Jewel of Thriving in Our Third Act
Max J Miller
Since August, we have explored aspirations for thriving in our third act. We’ve considered Awareness, Acceptance, Agency, Aliveness, Authenticity, Alignment, and Awe.
Today, I propose the crown jewel of all aspirations, agapé. It’s a term from ancient Greek (ἀγάπη pronounced ah-GAH-pay) meaning divine or transcendent love.
Some might question my inclusion of agapé as an aspiration. I can hear someone object, “You can’t strive for God’s love. It can’t be earned.” I hear you, and I beg your patience.
And, if you find God-talk off-putting, don’t break a sweat; I’m not out to convert you.
I want to unpack something of universal relevance that becomes increasingly urgent as we age. It’s a golden thread that runs through the fabric of my life, and through (as you will see) the stories that make up my wisdom legacy.
HIDE AND SEEK
In [007] I mentioned one of my other favorite Greek words, aletheia, meaning “truth,” which literally translates as “un-hidden” or “un-concealed.”
We have dozens of words for revealing and uncovering, as well as for hiding and concealing. This tells us something: we’re not just curious creatures who love to discover but also creatures who instinctively hide.
As I put the finishing touches on my upcoming book, Hiding In Plain Sight, I had an epiphany about my impulse to hide and employ tricks to deflect and avoid attention.
Just below the surface in many of my stories lurks the source of that impulse to hide: shame. As I reflect on the stories that make up my life journey, overcoming shame is a central theme.
Shame was at the root of my feeling “broken” as I struggled to cope with my over-scheduled life as a teenager (and also with my undiagnosed ADD). (See Issue [004]).
Shame was the mainspring that drove me to build a whole career and life around my fear of being seen. That’s the subject of Hiding In Plain Sight (see Issue [019]).
PEELING BACK THE LAYERS
So how do we move from hiding in shame to revealing love? The answer lies in a familiar metaphor…
Peeling away layers of an onion is a metaphor frequently used to illuminate the process of unconcealing. You hear this metaphor applied to solving a mystery or revealing the more profound truth of a situation.
Though I didn’t explicitly reference the onion metaphor, it applies to many of my stories where I brought awareness (the topic of Issue [023]) to my conditioning, preconceptions, and misconceptions. In Issue [027], I mentioned how bringing attention to our conditioning can restore our aliveness. In Issue [017], I peeled back a persistent compulsion to “fix” myself.
In each case, some perception or belief had been a hindrance. Awareness allowed me to peel away the misunderstanding, leading to new experiences of freedom.
Here’s where agapé comes in.
Early in life, I considered love to be something to be found out there in the world. That idea of love was an elusive feeling or emotion that I couldn’t control, like the weather.
Later, love was something I needed to build like a muscle. As a follower of Jesus, I was commanded to “Love God and love your neighbor.” The Christian Bible contains about 300 versions of that command. And if I’m candid, nothing has ever felt so futile.
Then, a dear friend, Reverend Ed Bacon, said something that spun my head around.
Consider that love is always present, but we rarely are. We are so distracted by our thoughts and emotions that we are blind to love.
— Ed Bacon
Even though I found Ed’s insight compelling, it left me stumped as to how to put it to practice. Some time later I came across a passage from Rumi that spoke to this same perspective but seemed to create an opening for action:
I immediately thought of the onion metaphor. The “barriers” he spoke of were like the layers of the onion to notice and peel away. I immediately saw how Ed Bacon’s observation applied as well. My judgments, upsets, resentments, and bitterness blinded me from being present to love. As I peeled them away, I could experience and express love more freely.
Any cook will point out the problem with this word-picture: an onion is made up of layers all the way down. When you’ve peeled all the layers, you are left with nothing.
And that’s the point. When you peel everything away, what’s left is love.
So, that’s where agapé becomes an aspiration. The point is not to generate it, find it, or create it but to reveal it, un-conceal it, to remove the barriers, the thoughts, and emotions that obscure it.
My friend Leonard, a hospice chaplain, tells me that the number one concern among the dying is this: Did I express my love completely?
In our third act, we don’t have time to waste on the barriers we’ve built—the judgments, resentments, and layers of shame that hide love from view. Peeling back these layers isn’t easy. It requires the awareness we’ve cultivated, the acceptance we’ve practiced, and the authenticity we’ve claimed.
But here’s what I’ve discovered: love isn’t something we need to generate or achieve. It’s what remains when we stop hiding. It’s been here all along, waiting beneath every layer of fear and self-protection.
This is the work of our third act—not to find love but to reveal it, not to become loving but to remove everything that obscures the love that’s already present.
When we finally stop hiding, what’s left is agapé. And that, my friends, is the crown jewel of thriving.
Shine,
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