what (always) kindles the soul?

The stoic philosopher Seneca said it two thousand years ago. “Professor Love” from USC Leo Buscaglia said in the early 1980’s on PBS while my dad watched from his armchair and then brought it to our dinner table. Dr. Vivek Murthy said it in his parting letter to an entire nation. And I have been saying it — in coaching rooms, in workshops, on protest signs, in conversations that start at 7am across a twelve-hour time difference with a colleague in across the world in India.

Love is not a new idea. It is the oldest technology we have. And we have it available to us in abundance.

The thing is, it’s not that we don't know — we do know. We know what it feels like to be truly seen by another person. We know the difference between a leader who is afraid and one who actually cares. We know, in our bodies, when we are in a room where it is safe to be fully human. We know all of this. And then we walk into a meeting, or open a policy document, or look at who got promoted, and we act like we don't.

Fear does that. Fear is an excellent amnesiac.

Seneca understood something that our leadership culture has spent centuries trying to disprove: love and fear cannot occupy the same space. When love moves in, fear moves out. Not because love is soft or naive — that is exactly the misreading we have been living with — but because love is a force. It kindles. That word is precise. Not warms. Not soothes. Kindles. As in: sets something on fire. As in: gets something going that wasn't moving before. As in: changes the conditions entirely.

I have watched this happen in spaces I work in. A leader who stops performing authority and starts practicing genuine curiosity — the whole team shifts. A facilitator who holds space without agenda — people say things they've never said out loud. A manager who tells the truth about their own uncertainty — suddenly everyone can breathe. That's not softness. That's ignition.

For a long time I felt I had to translate this. Dress it up in business language, cite the neuroscience, lead with the ROI before I was allowed to say what I actually meant. And what I actually meant was: love. Mutual care. Seeing people. Choosing connection over control.

I'm done translating. I’m prioritizing love.

Not because the research isn't useful — it is, and I will keep citing it — but because the hedging has its own cost. Every time I softened the word, I was participating in the very culture I was trying to shift. I was agreeing, implicitly, that love needed to earn its place at the table by disguising itself as something more respectable.

It doesn't. It never did.

Seneca wasn't embarrassed. Leo wasn't embarrassed. My dad, who asked his kids every single night what they learned that day, was not embarrassed. And I am choosing, finally, to not be embarrassed either.

This is the work. Not as a detour from the serious professional work, not as the spiritual side of what I do — as the whole thing. Love as leadership philosophy. Love as organizational strategy. Love as the most honest answer I have found to the question of what actually makes people thrive.

Two thousand years of smart humans pointing at the same thing. I think it's time we listened.

More to come. Let’s keep this love movement going..

I Love You This Much!