Perennial Meditations
Perennial Meditations is an ongoing series of short guided contemplations inspired by the writings of Stoics, saints, and sages. One quote. One meditation. One practice to carry into your day.
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St. Thomas Aquinas: The Things We Love
This is Perennial Meditations. A daily practice.
“The things that we love tell us what we are.”
— Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
We are very good at describing the person we intend to be.
Generous—just waiting for the right moment. Present—once things settle down. Disciplined—starting Monday.
We carry these self-descriptions with considerable confidence, updating them periodically to account for recent failures while leaving the essential portrait intact. The person we are becoming is always just slightly ahead of the person we currently are.
We know who we mean to be.
We are simply not there yet.
St. Thomas Aquinas, the theologian the Church would come to call its greatest mind, was not interested in the person we intend to be. He was interested in something considerably more revealing. Not our aspirations. Not our stated values. Not the story we tell about ourselves at our most charitable.
Our loves.
What we actually turn toward when nothing is required of us. What we spend without being asked. What we protect when it comes under pressure. What we return to when the day has no particular demands and we are free to go anywhere. These, Aquinas insisted, are the honest portrait.
He believed that love was not primarily an emotion.
It was a direction.
The soul, he taught, is always in motion and always oriented toward something, always leaning, always moving in the direction of whatever it finds most real and most worth having.
We do not choose our loves the way we choose our opinions.
They form beneath our opinions, deeper than our decisions, and they govern our lives whether we acknowledge them or not.
This is what makes his observation so difficult.
Opinions can be adjusted. Stories can be revised. But the “loves” are harder to argue with because they are not claims we make. They are directions we are already moving in. And the evidence is in last week’s record—not what we intended, but where we actually went.
Not what we planned to spend our time on, but what we actually spent it on.
Not who we meant to be, but who we were when no one was watching, and nothing was required. The answers, honestly examined, can be uncomfortable.
But it’s important to remember that the “loves” can be reordered.
Not quickly, not by decision alone, but gradually, through the slow, patient practice of turning toward what is genuinely good often enough and long enough that it begins to feel like home. That reordering is what the moral and spiritual life is ultimately for.
It is what Aquinas spent his life describing and what every tradition in this series, in one form or another, points toward.
Daily Practice
Look back at last week honestly—not at what you meant to do, but at where your time, attention, and energy actually went. What does that record reveal about what you love?
Sit quietly with that picture for a few minutes without defending it.
Then ask two more questions: Is there a love you want to reorder? What would one small step in that direction look like today?
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well.
J.W.
P.S. If you found today’s meditation helpful, consider sharing it with a friend!