Stephen R. Covey, whose book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989, p.132) was a best-seller for a long time, tells of an exercise he sometimes used with his students while he was teaching college. He required his students to think through what they would do if they had only the remainder of the semester to live. He said that exercise often produced some profound responses. The dominant theme of the resulting activity, the underlying principle, was love. Have you ever been pushed into deciding what you really want most out of life? If you have, have you found yourself discovering that love is the most important thing in life for you? Lots of people have.

Love really is the most important thing. But lots of us don't have a good idea of what love is. So…