Love is a Skill not a Feeling

In our last letter, we began exploring the first pillar of the Love, Learn, Play (or LLP) framework—Love.

The biggest takeaway was the remarkable five-word statement from the lead researcher of the 75-year-long Harvard Study of Adult Development: :

"Happiness is love. Full stop."

It sounds so simple: if you want to be happier, all you need is love. But what does that really mean? And if love is so central to flourishing, why do we understand it so poorly? Perhaps one reason is linguistic.

The English language has one word—love—to describe a wide range of profoundly different experiences. We say we “love” our spouse, our children, our friends, our country, our favorite music, money, and even ice cream!!!

But are all these forms of love really the same?

The Limits of Language

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously wrote:

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."

Language doesn't merely describe reality—it shapes how we perceive it.

Imagine trying to explain colors to someone who can only see in black and white. With a purely binary experience of color, they would only know how to discuss color through a very narrow, binary range of language: black vs white, light vs dark. What Wittgenstein was suggesting is that the reverse might be true as well. Perhaps something similar is at work with the way we understand “love.” If we limit ourselves to discussing love in terms of its presence or absence only, then we’re also limiting our experience of love.

Many ancient cultures understood this.

The Greeks had multiple words for love:

• Eros – romantic and passionate love.
• Philia – friendship and companionship.
• Storge – familial affection.
• Pragma – enduring love based on commitment.
• Ludus – playful affection.
• Philautia – self-respect and self-love.
• Agape – universal compassion.

Ancient Sanskrit, even more remarkably, contains dozens of words describing the many shades of love. While English compresses all these experiences into a single word, Sanskrit reveals a richer emotional landscape:

Prema — pure, selfless love that seeks nothing in return. In Bhakti traditions, it represents divine love in its highest form.

Sneha — tender affection and warmth, often associated with parental love and deep friendship. The word literally suggests something that "sticks," reflecting enduring bonds.

Maitrī — loving-kindness and friendliness toward all beings. In Buddhism, it is one of the four immeasurables and is cultivated through meditation.

Karuṇā — compassion arising from the recognition of another's suffering and the desire to alleviate it.

Bhakti — devotional love directed toward the Divine. More than emotion, it is surrender, reverence, and trust.

Anurāga — deep attachment, fondness, and growing affection. The word suggests a love that intensifies over time.

Vātsalya — the nurturing love of a parent toward a child. Krishna's foster mother Yashoda embodies vatsalya in Hindu tradition.

Śṛṅgāra — romantic and aesthetic love, celebrated in poetry, music, and art. It encompasses beauty, longing, and delight.

Kāma — sensual desire and attraction. Unlike the modern tendency to equate love with desire, Indian philosophy sees kāma as one dimension of human life, not its entirety.

Viraha — the bittersweet longing felt in separation from a loved one. Mystics often describe longing itself as a form of love.

Sevā — love expressed through selfless service. To serve another without expectation is considered one of the purest manifestations of love.

Samarpana — complete surrender and trust. It is the love that relinquishes control.

Perhaps our ancestors understood something we've forgotten:

Love is not a single emotion. It is, like color, a spectrum.

The Greeks dissected love into different relationships. Sanskrit goes even further, differentiating not only by relationship type but also by emotional textures and spiritual dimensions—affection, compassion, devotion, longing, service, and surrender.

Love is romance. It is reverence.

But it is also friendship and compassion, service and surrender, longing and belonging, and so many other things that become apparent when we stop thinking of it through the confines of one single word.

And perhaps flourishing depends less on finding love than on recognizing the many expressions of love that are already present in our lives.

Seeing with New Eyes

Marcel Proust wrote:

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

Our modern-day social scripts make us assume that more=better. If something is good, if something is important, then we need to gather and hoard more and more of it.

But we don’t necessarily need more love to flourish.

The first priority should be recognizing the love already surrounding us.

Notice friendship. Notice loyalty. Notice compassion. Notice gratitude.

Notice the quiet love expressed by parents who still worry about their grown children.

Notice the affection hidden inside ordinary rituals.

Notice the person who remembers your name, the friend who calls after years apart, the neighbor who checks on you.

When you train yourself to notice these things, you’ll find something surprisingly fortunate about love:

Love often arrives quietly, inevitably, and we don’t need to break our backs by compulsively chasing after it.

The Blind Spot of Modern Culture

Modern culture disproportionately celebrates one form of love—romantic love.

Movies, songs, advertisements, and social media continually reinforce the narrative that happiness depends upon finding "the one."

Romantic love is beautiful.

But when it becomes our only definition of love, disappointment becomes inevitable becauseno single relationship can satisfy all of our emotional needs.

The happiest people in the Harvard Study weren't necessarily those with perfect marriages.

They were those with rich networks of human connection: people with strong friendships, who were deeply embedded in a community, who engaged in service of others, who made room for compassion and a healthy amount of self-respect.

Expanding the Circle

Mother Teresa once said:

"We have forgotten that we belong to each other."

And Albert Einstein wrote:

"Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature."

Love grows as awareness of our intrinsic interconnectedness grows.

The journey of love is really the journey from "me" to "we,” when we make the mental and practical shifts from possession to participation, from attachment to belonging.

Love as Recognition

The philosopher Martin Buber distinguished between two ways of relating:

"I-It" relationships, where we treat others as objects, and "I-Thou" relationships, where we encounter others as fully human beings.

Much suffering comes from forgetting this distinction.

When we reduce people to labels, roles, or opinions, love diminishes.

When we see them as fellow travelers, love expands.

Love begins with recognition.

Why This Matters for Flourishing

Love is the anchor of the Love, Learn, Play framework.

Without love, learning becomes cold, play becomes empty, and worldly success becomes lonely and hollow.

Love provides the psychological safety that allows us to grow, experiment, fail, and flourish.

It is not merely one dimension of life.

It is the soil from which everything else grows.

This Week's Practice

Try this simple exercise to train your abilities to recognize love in its many forms.

For one week, keep a "Love Journal."

At the end of each day, write down three expressions of love you noticed.

Not just romantic love. But

• Friendship.
• Kindness.
• Forgiveness.
• Patience.
• Generosity.
• Compassion.

Notice how your attention begins to change.

As psychologist William James observed:

"My experience is what I agree to attend to."

What we notice grows. That’s why recognition alone can make such a big impact on flourishing.

Reflection Questions

• Which form of love have I neglected?
• Have I reduced love to romance?
• What forms of love surround me that I rarely acknowledge?
• How might my life change if I saw love everywhere?

Because perhaps love isn't scarce.

Perhaps awareness is.

And perhaps flourishing begins not with finding something new, but with seeing what has always been there.

RECOMMENDED FOR YOU

In this Aeon essay, Emily Herring revisits Henri Bergson’s idea that laughter helps keep human beings “elastic” — able to adapt, loosen rigid habits, and stay socially alive. It’s a thoughtful companion to Love, Learn, Play because it treats playfulness and humor not as trivial distractions, but as forces that help us remain flexible, free, and fully human. https://aeon.co/essays/for-henri-bergson-laughter-is-what-keeps-us-elastic-and-free

This Women’s Health piece highlights new research suggesting that forgiveness is linked with greater well-being over time — especially psychological and social well-being. The article is based on a large international study from our friends at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard, reminding us that love is not only something we feel, but something we practice: letting go, repairing where possible, and making room for life to move forward. https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a70783598/forgiving-good-for-you-study/

Two of our recent interviews show this week's letter in practice. In our conversation with Michael O'Neal, Parent University we see agape made visible with a community drawing its circle of love wide enough to include every parent who walks through the door. And in our interview with Daniel and Natalie Gundersen, Daniel names love with a second four-letter word: time. His story of choosing presence with his family over the pursuit of more is the Uninterrupted Minute lived out at the scale of a life. Together, they remind us that love is not just something we find but the attention we give.