Love over Knowledge

1st Corinthians 8:1b says "knowledge puffs up while love builds up"

I read this this morning and have been thinking about it a lot.  We live in the information age and have immeasurable amounts of information at our figure tips, but have we spent all this time trying to gain knowledge that we have forgotten what it means to love.  I love to be built up, but I have traded that for a lie. I have instead puffed myself up like a balloon.   If I am not loving others and they are not loving me than it is all just fake.  Real love builds up.  And I feel like as a society we have forgotten what love is all about.  We have become a people that seek love.  That isn't what this verse says.  Love can't be found.  It is something we must practice.  It says love builds up (others).  To love someone means to build them up.  Is that how I treat my wife, my friends and those around me?  Do I try to build them up?  Or am I so concerned with myself that I puffed myself up and failed to build them up?  What does it look like to build my neighbor up, my friend up or my wife?  It means putting their desires above mine.  It means giving them my time, my energy, my money and using my skills to sharpen them and make them better (but not impose on them my definition of better).  How often have we seen or heard about people trying to make others better, and it just leads to failure and frustration.  Is it because we want to see them be built up? Or do we want to see the fruit of our labors?  Do we get mad at the apple tree in spring for not having apples on it?  Building something well and correctly takes time, just as it takes time for the apple tree to produce a full healthy apple.  Before we can build someone up we must first take the time to get to know them and see what we can offer them (not impose on them).  To build someone up means to make them better than they were before.  Are people better off because they are in relationship with me? Or am I too busy tearing them down to build them up? Or am I too busy trying to fix their 'problems' that I forget to build them up?
My challenge as Lent begins is to find ways that I can build others up around me.  May you build others up around you.