Love
Swen Nater

If there’s one word I heard Coach Wooden give priority to more than any other, it’s the word, “love.” He often said,

The most important word in the English language is ‘love.’

He told us players,

I didn’t like you all the same but I hope I loved you all the same.

Being around Coach Wooden during my playing days and after, it seemed to me, his goal in life was to get as close to practicing perfect love as he could, every day. That’s why he once told me,

You haven’t lived the perfect day until you’ve done something for someone without even the slightest thought of receiving anything in return.

Coach tried to live each day to perfection. He would be the first to tell you he never did it but that he tried and got close once in awhile. He never told me the required ingredients for the recipe for “The Perfect Day” but he did mention that charity, with no strings attached, was one of them.

Once, Coach gave me this poem.

A bell isn’t a bell until you ring it.
A song isn’t a song until you sing it.
And the love that is in us wasn’t put there to stay.
Love isn’t love till you give it away.

I think it’s anonymous but, whoever wrote it, understood you can’t show love by talking about it; you show it by doing something for someone that proves you love them. At the train station, the person who sees the elderly lady with the heavy baggage and says, “That poor old lady. I feel so sorry for her having to carry those heavy bags.” does not love the lady. The person that takes the lady’s bags to her car, or on the train, does show he loves the lady.

When we are born, our thoughts, efforts, and concentration are completely on survival. When we are infants, it’s not much different. When we are in the terrible 2s, it might get even worse. But, little by little through the early years and into the teens, we begin to realize we are not the center of the universe and others are important also. That’s when we begin to gain what we call “civility.”

Coach Wooden once said,

Life is the united effort of many.

I don’t know at what age the light of civility went on in Coach’s mind but, from that moment on he was on a quest to love more and think of himself less. He continued that quest for all the years of his life, and we are the better for it because his example.