Rules are for robots. Principles are for people.   
– Erie Chapman

   The Fifth Principle of Loving Care is about principles. Perhaps it should be the first principle since it describes why principles need to be our guiding lights along the pathway of caregiving.
   So often, people look around for rules to guide them in their lives. The world is too complex to live by rules. The more we live by rules, the less we are living our humanity. Rules call for rote behavior. Principles require thinking.
   After thirty years in healthcare, I’m acutely aware of the rule-consciousness of hospitals and the goverment. As a lawyer, I’m also aware that every rule requires interpretation – something only a human being can do. What are the guiding principles in your life?…

   From reading this Journal, you know that my first guiding principle is to Live Love, not Fear. I believe that we need principles like this to remind us that the most important thing we can do is to give to others. Here is one of my favorite principles: 

In order to accomplish anything important, we must love it more than our own ease.

   The source of this marvelous quote is George Eliot (1819-1880) the female author of Silas Marner and Middlemarch, who took a man’s name because it was so difficult for women to publish their novels in the 19th century. Eliot herself, as a member of the English gentry, could have elected a life of ease and comfort. Instead she embarked on the path to become a writer and, by the end of the 19th century, was considered one of the greatest novelists in English history.
   Living love is so difficult a goal that it illustrates why we must we must love this goal more than our own ease. It’s an odd combination of words. We must love Love (giving to others) in order to escape the boundaries of our own comfort.  And this is exactly why the principle of Love is such an important guide.
   The wisdom of loving principles goes back at least to Aristotle who wrote that "the wicked obey from fear and the good from love." Rules are the shield used by bureaucrats who have neither the wisdom nor the courage to act on their own. These are the people who explain mean-spirited behavior by saying, "Hey, I’m just following the rules."
   How do we know when and how to follow a given rule? For true lovers, the answer will always be found in the heart, not in the rulebook.