Love is the point

For the past two weeks, I’ve been consumed by Wimbledon.

As a lifelong tennis fan, I’m usually unaffected by the sport’s quirky scoring conventions—they’re background noise. This time, they came to the foreground because I was listening differently.

In my coaching practice lately, the distinction between love and fear has been a recurring theme. Specifically, looking at whether clients are approaching situations in their lives from a place of love or fear.

With this on my mind, when the Wimbledon umpires called the score, I found myself drifting off to contemplate the meaning of “love.”

In tennis, love means nothing.
In life, love means everything.

On the surface, these seem like opposites. But the more I thought about it, the more it felt like life-love has something in common with tennis-love.

When you’re coming from fear instead of love, it’s usually because you’re holding onto something: judgements, beliefs, memories, traditions, other people’s opinions, etc. Your ego references these variables in an attempt to control and keep you safe.

If that’s true of fear, what if the inverse is true of love?

What if, just like in tennis, coming from love in your life was about being at zero—emptying out, freeing yourself of ego and control?

(Forgive the forced metaphor. I’ve been steeped in tennis, and sometimes it’s worth taking a chance on love.)

There’s no consensus on where love in tennis originated.

Some say it comes from the French word l’oeuf, meaning “the egg,” which kind of looks like a zero. Others believe it’s a nod to “love of the game,” playing for sheer enjoyment no matter the score.

To support my metaphor here, let’s assume the latter, that love in tennis refers to doing something with no attachment to the outcome.

Love is pure.
Love is unburdened.
Love is present.

If you approached your life—your relationships, your health, your work, your money, your home, your routines, your self-talk, all of it—with 10% more pure, unburdened presence, how would you show up differently?

This is not something to do. It’s a way to be.

It’s a dropping, a letting go, a softening of your grip. It’s a lightness you can allow to flow through you. It’s air.

Love is nothing—and the only thing that counts.