Mar 05 2025 14 mins
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, explains the power of the heart over the mind like this: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
And "teaching the longing" is exactly right. For love is a habit. We, of course, may imagine that love strikes like lightning, without explanation or warning. But we are actually habituated toward our loves. We are shaped by habits that present those things that are worth our love.
Love, in short, takes practice.
Our hearts are calibrated through imitation and immersion into practices that, overtime, curate our hearts to particular ends. We learn to love not primarily by acquiring information about what we should love but rather through practices that form the habits of how we love.
Rituals train us to love rightly.
In the church we have a different word for ritual: liturgy.
And "teaching the longing" is exactly right. For love is a habit. We, of course, may imagine that love strikes like lightning, without explanation or warning. But we are actually habituated toward our loves. We are shaped by habits that present those things that are worth our love.
Love, in short, takes practice.
Our hearts are calibrated through imitation and immersion into practices that, overtime, curate our hearts to particular ends. We learn to love not primarily by acquiring information about what we should love but rather through practices that form the habits of how we love.
Rituals train us to love rightly.
In the church we have a different word for ritual: liturgy.