It’s just 13 words. A benediction on vinyl. A final thesis statement wrapped in a melody. An ironically peaceful swan song.

This line, from “The End” on Abbey Road (1969), was the last lyric the Beatles recorded together before their breakup. It's fitting, then, that it sounds more like a moral than a melody—a final wave from the iconic four bandmates as they walked out of the studio, and into history.

But let’s rewind.

By the time the Beatles made Abbey Road, they were frayed. Creative tension, business squabbles, egos, exhaustion—all the classic band implosion symptoms. And yet, in the middle of that final chaos, they built something astonishing. “The End” caps a medley of short songs that McCartney described as “a kind of operatic structure,” a blending of fragments into wholeness (MacDonald, 2005).

And let’s face it; that’s an incredibly therapy-related concept if anything is. Their final song caps off a final album of songs that blend fragments into wholeness, which caps of their wild life as a game-changing band. And the message in the moment, while it can seem at first glance like a kind of simple equation—you get back what you give—is really more of a complicated series of equations that result in a porchlight flickering from them to one another, and to their fans across the globe.

That lyric—“the love you take is equal to the love you make”—isn’t just poetic. It is a sibling to concepts from social psychology, including the notion of reciprocity as a norm (Gouldner, 1960), suggesting that humans tend to return kindness with kindness. It’s also a cousin to self-determination theory, teaching that when we connect to others meaningfully, we thrive (Ryan & Deci, 2000). It’s less advice and more invitation. From a messy band closing a messy era, it’s an interesting final word.

In group therapy, in trauma recovery, and in every social work seminar ever attended, the truth holds: healing happens in relationship, in community. It doesn’t have to be neat, and since it involves us humans, it likely won’t be. It doesn’t have to be constant. But it does have to be real.

When we offer love—genuine connection, radical acceptance, empathy, time, care, attention—it matters.

To others, yes.

But also to ourselves.

The Beatles didn’t always get it right, and since none of us do, we will let them off the hook. But this lyric? This was them choosing grace over a grievance. One last reminder that our legacy isn’t made from being right or successful or clean and tidy. It’s made from how we loved. And love, in this case, isn’t soft—it’s structural.

From a neuroscience lens, acts of love (kindness, empathy, compassion) activate the brain’s reward system—releasing dopamine and oxytocin, regulating the nervous system, and decreasing stress (Fredrickson, 2013). Our brains are wired to know that we’re supposed to connect if we are to be alive at all.

That’s good news when life feels like a medley of mismatched verses and fragmented parts offered from ourselves and others when we can sometimes get along and when we often can’t stand one another.

It’s good news when your inner voice is out of tune.

When the bridge collapses mid-song.

Because in the end—your end, my end, this season of our lives’ end—the complicated arithmetic behind the porchlight punchline doesn’t lie, does it.

What you give? It echoes.

What you receive? It settles deep.

And even when love feels like a risky investment, the returns are quietly cumulative.

The real, structural, barefoot-on-pavement things from which a life worth living is built.

You don’t have to be a Beatle.

You don’t have to be perfect.

You do, however, have to live out loud the 57 words of the chorus, a repetition of just two:

Love you

Repeated 23 more times—and not because the record is scratching. On purpose.

Then it’s followed, simply, by:

Love.

Twenty-three years after the Beatles sang the answer, Mary Oliver penned the question: “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” (1992).

The love you make out of your one wild and precious life?

That’s what you will take from it.

That’s what we’ll all take from each other:

Whatever we’ve given.

Thank you... John, Paul, George, and Ringo.