Ben Greenfield reflects on the central role of familial love in his life, stating that his family is the most important thing and describing practices (eye-gazing, snuggling, sexual connection, devoted time with his children) that cultivate love at home. He explains that this home-based love is the foundation that empowers him to try to bring the same quality of love into his public work (podcast, stage, writing), and notes he feels he has not yet fully done so. The excerpt is a personal, introspective argument that authentic love begins at home and can be extended outward.
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What do you think that has been most pivotal for you to start to recognize that.
When it comes to love.
For me, it's been my family, the realization that.
They'Re the most important thing to me. And it's impossible for me to stay close and connected to my family without the Greenfield home being absolutely filled with love. Eye gazing, snuggling, sexual connection with my wife.
Dates and time, mindful, devoted, focused time with my children. The amount of happiness and fulfillment that that brings, that pouring that amount of love into my home brings, that's where it started for me. And then from there, realizing that that same type of familial love that you give to your wife or your spouse or your children is. Is the same type of love that you can take out into the world, into your career, right? And I don't think I have even come close to bringing to the world from stage, on my podcast, in my writings, in my interaction with people.
I haven't come close to expressing the same amount of love in those scenarios as I do in the Greenfield home, you know, when I'm just there with my wife and my boys, and I'm currently on almost like a quest to.
Take that same love that I've experienced with my family and bring that forth into the rest of the world. But for me, it had to start at home with my wife and with my boys. The deep realization that it's love and connection with the family that kind of equips me and empowers me to go forth and bring that same love to the rest of the world. Because my MO for the longest time was like, you have your family time, then you go out in the world, and then you're that lone independent wolf who's all about business and, you know, and very didactic, you know, education, teaching others about fitness and health and nutrition, but with nowhere near the amount of love that's expressed on, like, with the family, you know, on the home front.
