The essence is timeless. The expression must rise with us.

The Timelessness of Love and the Limits of Us

Einstein once said, “You cannot solve a problem at the same level of thinking you were at when you created it.” I used to imagine that this was only about intelligence or strategy. Over time, I discovered it touches something far deeper.

Love itself is timeless. Scripture tells us clearly: “Love never fails.” It is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. What changes is not love, but us. Our ability to live out love grows, or it stalls. The challenges of life are not solved by abandoning love, but by allowing our own capacity to deepen so that love can take fuller expression through us.

When Immature Love Fell Short

Parenting gave me my first lessons. When my eldest son, Aden, was five, I wanted him to memorize the multiplication table in Mandarin. My intention was good. I thought I was preparing him for the future, giving him an advantage. But the process became a struggle. By ten, he still could not recall it easily, and I was frustrated.

Eventually I realized the problem was not his ability. It was my approach. I had equated effort with love, when in truth love also requires wisdom. Once I shifted starting with English, which he grasped more naturally, then bridging to Mandarin, the learning came alive. Love had not failed. My expression of it had been too narrow.

Marriage revealed something similar. There was an evening when my wife invited me to a team dinner. I went, but I arrived late because of mentoring, and I left early because of my children. Both choices came from love, but they carried different costs. I was trying to stretch myself between people, as though love meant being everywhere at once. Slowly I learned that love sometimes means choosing presence in a way that prioritizes, not divides.

Mentorship has carried the same pattern. A decade ago, my mentor disrupted my life with wisdom I could not yet see. Today, I find myself mentoring younger men, often in ordinary moments like exercising together. I talk less and listen more. Love once came to me through words; now it often flows better through presence.

Even in business, I have felt love needing to grow. My first preschool was born out of fatherhood. I wanted to repair the cracks I saw between parents and children. That was genuine love. But in time, I came to see that the shortage of early childhood educators across Johor Bahru and Singapore was much larger than my personal concerns. Love widened its reach from my own children to a whole community.

The lesson was consistent: love had not changed, but my capacity to live it had to expand.

Love as the Highest Energy

Philosophically, I have come to see love as the most enduring form of energy. Motivation is like fire: it burns brightly for a time, but eventually it fades. Love is more like gravity: unseen, constant, always pulling things together.

Scripture gives us not a sentiment but a description. Love is patient and kind. It is not self-seeking, not proud, not easily angered, and it does not keep a record of wrongs. It protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres. And it never fails.

Leadership thinkers echo this idea. John Maxwell calls it the Law of Addition: leaders add value by serving others. In that sense, love becomes the highest addition a leader can bring.

A Closer Look at Love

• Love is patient. It invests for the long term, like planting a tree and waiting for fruit. It keeps showing up even when results are slow.
• Love is kind. It is strength that takes a gentle form, choosing words and actions that lift rather than crush.
• Love does not envy. It rejoices when others succeed, seeing their growth as part of a shared story rather than a threat.
• Love does not boast, it is not proud. It resists the need to prove itself. Humility keeps it open to growth.
• Love does not dishonor others. It protects dignity, even in failure, and restores what shame might take away.
• Love is not self-seeking. It does not close in on itself. It looks outward for the good of others.
• Love is not easily angered. It does not react from wounded expectation but steadies itself through empathy.
• Love keeps no record of wrongs. It lets go of the ledgers of the past so that new futures can emerge.
• Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It does not feed on gossip or downfall but celebrates honesty, even when it is hard.
• Love always protects. It creates safe spaces where growth can happen.
• Love always trusts. It chooses to lean toward trust even when risk remains.
• Love always hopes. It refuses to reduce people to their current condition.
• Love always perseveres. It keeps going when feelings fade or results delay.
• Love never fails. Every other motivation eventually runs its course. Love alone endures across generations.

Love in Malaysia’s Reality

This truth is visible even in the Malaysian context. A 2024 UNICEF study found that one in five children in urban poor families showed delayed development because of the absence of engaged parental presence. Providing for survival was real, but it was not enough. The love that sustained one season needed to be expressed differently for the next.

The 2014 Kelantan floods showed this at a societal scale. Universiti Malaya researchers noted that villages rebuilt faster through volunteer efforts across faiths than through government aid alone. Money and logistics mattered, but it was compassion that carried people through the hardest months.

Even in the workplace, the same pattern emerges. Gallup’s 2023 survey of Southeast Asia found only 21% of employees engaged at work. Yet in organizations where leaders expressed love through empathy, trust, and recognition, engagement tripled, and profitability rose significantly. The essence of love had not changed, but the form it took in listening, mentoring, and recognition made all the difference.

Growing to Live Love

Love is timeless. It never fails. But we do not automatically live it at the level life requires. Growth becomes the bridge.

In parenting, that growth means learning to guide children by their strengths rather than our assumptions. In marriage, it means forgiving quickly instead of keeping score. In leadership, it means empowering others when our instinct is to control. In organizations, it means building cultures that place people before results.

Love remains the same. What must change is our maturity to embody it more fully.

The Reverse That Redefines It All

Here lies the paradox. Love itself never changes. It is patient, kind, humble, forgiving, enduring the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

But our capacity to live it must keep rising. The problems of life are not solved by abandoning love, but by allowing love to take deeper root within us. Love remains timeless in essence, yet ever new in expression.

Love never fails. But we must grow to live it.