Love Learn Play
You Don’t Just Fall Into Love. You Practice It.
Dear Friends,
Our previous letters explored how love, in its many forms, is the foundation of flourishing.
But this raises an important question, a question we’ve touched on but which calls for a deeper investigation:
What exactly is love?
Most of us have been taught that love is a feeling.
Movies tell us that love is chemistry: something that happens to us when the time is right and we meet the right person. Songs tell us that love is a passionate experience that we fall into and out of. Advertisements tell us that love is measured through material gestures: the size of a diamond, or the scent of a perfume.
But what if we've misunderstood love? What if love is less a feeling and more a skill?
What if the secret to flourishing lies not in finding love, not in waiting for it to find us, but instead learning how to love?
The Myth of Falling in Love
The movies get one thing right: romantic love does begin with a kind of magic.
Neuroscientists tell us that early romantic attraction floods the brain with dopamine, oxytocin, and norepinephrine. We feel energized, euphoric, and even obsessed as our beloved occupies our every thought.
Nature designed this phase of initial fiery passion to bring two people together.
But nature never intended it to remain forever.
The butterflies eventually settle. The excitement gives way to familiarity. This is by design, biologically and neurologically. After all, how can we focus on the necessary day-to-day tasks that ensure our own personal wellbeing–eating well, exercising, sleeping enough–if we remain stuck in that state of total obsession with one other person?
If you understand and accept all of this as a natural and necessary stage in love’s progression that’s to be expected, then you can learn to love that other person in new ways over time.
If, on the other hand, you limit your definition of love to that single blissful feeling of early romantic love, you might conclude:
"I've fallen out of love."
Perhaps not.
Perhaps you have simply arrived at the place where real love begins. It’s time to let that feeling go: be grateful for the euphoria, yes, but then turn your attention to what comes next and you will find something much more desirable than a fleeting high.
Erich Fromm's Radical Insight
The psychologist Erich Fromm spent much of his life studying love.
His conclusion was startling:
"Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an orientation of character."
Love, he argued, is not something we receive.
It is something we become. A loving person
Most people, he observed, believe the problem is finding the right person.
But the deeper problem is learning how to love.
As Fromm put it:
"The problem of love is not the problem of an object, but the problem of a faculty."
We know how important love is for flourishing. But when we expand our definition of love to extend beyond a single person or a single feeling, we find that flourishing depends less on being loved and more on becoming loving.
Love Is a Verb
The ancient Greeks had a profound understanding of this.
They recognized that love was not merely emotion but action.
Pragma—the love of long-term commitment—was not based on passion but on loyalty.
Agape—the highest form of love—was not based on attraction but compassion.
Thankfully, we haven’t completely lost our connection to those insights. Marriage vows, for instance, often demonstrate a more expansive understanding of love.
Nobody at the altar says,
"I promise to always feel passionate."
They say something more like:
"I promise to always support you."
Wedding vows focus more on actions than feelings.
As Mother Teresa observed:
"Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love."
Love reveals itself in ordinary acts.
Showing up.
Listening.
Encouraging.
Being patient.
Remaining kind when kindness is difficult.
Feelings come and go, often through biochemical mechanisms that we don’t fully control. But at every moment, in whatever we’re doing, we can choose to embrace a love, learn, play mindset and act in ways that reflect lasting commitments and have lasting impacts.
The Four Pillars of Loving
Erich Fromm identified four qualities that make love possible:
Care
If you love something, you care for it.
Love is an active concern for the life and growth of another.
Responsibility
Not obligation, but responsiveness.
Love notices needs and responds accordingly.
Respect
Respect means seeing another person as they truly are—not as we want them to be.
Love prioritizes understanding over possessive and selfish desires. Knowledge
We cannot love what we do not know.
Real love requires curiosity.
It asks:
"Who are you?" Not once. Not twice. Over and over again.
Love Requires Practice
Imagine wanting to become a pianist.
Would you simply wait until you felt musically inclined or inspired?
Would you expect mastery without discipline and practice?
Of course not.
Yet we often expect love to succeed without effort.
Fromm found this strange.
People devote years to careers, sports, and education, but almost no time to learning the art of loving.
And yet love may be life's most important skill.
As the Dalai Lama reminds us:
"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive."
The Greatest Threat to Love
Surprisingly, the greatest enemy of love is not hatred.
Hatred is what takes over when love is absent. If we’re looking to identify the greatest threat to love, the real question to ask is what accounts for the absence of love in the first place?
Simply put, it is a distraction.
Love requires attention.
And attention is becoming increasingly scarce.
We live in a world of notifications, interruptions, and endless stimulation.
Our devices compete with our interpersonal relationships.
Our thoughts compete with our capacity for presence.
As Simone Weil wrote:
"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."
To love another person is to say:
"For this moment, nothing is more important than you."
Perhaps that is why relationships often suffer—not because people stop caring, but because they stop paying attention.
Love Begins with Ourselves
Another misunderstanding is that self-love is selfish. Not so. In fact, self-love is often a necessary condition for loving others.
Ancient Greek philosophers called healthy self-love philautia.
Without self-respect, we cannot sustain compassion toward others.
Jesus taught, "Love your neighbor as yourself,” and he wasn’t the only one. A version of this dictate exists in just about every religious tradition, and we’ve heard this our whole lives.
But this formula only works if we do love ourselves.
Self-love and love for others are not opposites. They are deeply interrelated.
People who constantly criticize themselves often extend the same harshness to others.
People who cultivate compassion inwardly often radiate compassion outwardly.
Love Is an Orientation
Perhaps this is what the mystics across religions have always known.
Love is not merely something we do.
Love is a way of being.
Rumi wrote:
"Through love all that is bitter will be sweet."
And the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh said:
"Understanding is love's other name."
Love transforms not when external circumstances change, but rather when our perception changes.
When we begin to see people less as competitors and more as fellow travelers, less as objects and more as subjects, less as strangers and more as reflections of ourselves, then love grows and people flourish.
This Week's Practice: Loving Attention
Choose one person this week.
It could be your spouse, friend, child, or colleague.
Give them ten minutes of uninterrupted presence.
No phone.
No multitasking.
No rehearsing your response.
Simply listen.
Not to fix.
Not to advise.
Not even to agree.
Just to understand.
Then ask yourself:
- How often do I truly listen?
- What did I notice that I usually miss?
- Did my attention deepen the connection?
Reflection Questions
- Do I think of love as a feeling or a practice?
- Where am I waiting to receive love instead of learning to give it?
- Which of Fromm's four qualities—care, responsibility, respect, or knowledge—needs strengthening in me?
- How might my relationships change if I treated love as an art to be cultivated?
Flourishing is not about finding the perfect person.
Flourishing is about becoming the kind of person who knows how to love.
After all, feelings come and go.
But character remains.
And love, ultimately, is not something that happens to us.
It is something we practice.
With warmth,
Akhil
P.S. In two weeks:
Love | Part 4: The Greatest Barrier to Love Is Fear
Rumi said our task is not to seek love but to remove the barriers we have built against it. Why fear, ego, and judgment prevent us from experiencing the love that is already present.
RECOMMENDED FOR YOU
In this Medium essay, Deepak Chopra explores love not as an emotion that comes and goes, but as a way of being. He argues that when we stop striving, seeking, and looking outside ourselves for fulfillment, love can soften the boundary between self and other and reveal a deeper sense of connection. https://deepakchopra.medium.com/when-seeking-ends-awakening-begins-how-love-quietly-undoes-the-illusion-of-separation-b69cf1c47317
In this Atlantic essay, Faith Hill explores a striking paradox: young people still want love, but growing numbers are giving up on pursuing romantic relationships. As dating comes to feel increasingly exhausting, risky, and transactional, Hill asks what happens when the desire for connection remains but the willingness to pursue it fades. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/09/modern-romance-recession/687968/
Our Conversations on Flourishing podcast offers two conversations that bring this week’s theme to life. In our conversation with Michael O’Neal, Parent University: Lifelong Learning Through Love & Play (YouTube, Spotify), love takes the form of service: quietly noticing what people need and doing something about it. And in 3 Lessons on How to Flourish as a Family with Daniel and Natalie Gundersen (YouTube, Spotify), love requires something even simpler: time. Together, the conversations remind us that love becomes visible through what we do, where we direct our attention, and how we show up for others. You can now watch and listen to UEF Insights on YouTube and Spotify.