Jesus says in John 12:25 that the person who loves his life, seeking to retain it, really destroys it.
Self-interest and self-preservation are ultimately self-defeating. The harder one tries to live for self, the less of life one really has, until at the end there is nothing left of it at all, and one has nothing to show for it. As C. S. Lewis well stated:
"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
John 12:24 Jesus tells us that unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
If you want love then you have to give love away, freely, unconditionally and abundantly. Withhold it and all you do is suffocate, bury and never truly experience it.
If you want life, then give yours away, to Christ, who is the only One who can give it back to you again, abundantly and for eternity.
Love truly begins a metamorphosis in you, when you can freely give it away and life truly begins to be lived when you've given it away and find that Christ holds all the keys for abundant living.
So live by dying(to self) and love by giving love away. The people who are the most difficult to love, are the ones who need it the most.
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