How would you like to be loved?

On careful attention

I’ve always craved a simple way of being, a way of operating in the world that was straightforward and consistent and gave me access to the feelings I most care about: love, warmth, relaxation, vibrance.

This morning, while laying in bed and watching the sunlight pattern the ceiling, there was a quiet sadness in my chest. As I focused on that sensation, a question popped into my head.

“How does this want to be loved?”

A curious question to direct towards a feeling of melancholy. But the answer immediately appeared: it wants to be felt. It wants to be held. It wants to take up space. And then it wants to release, and float away.

That question was enough to allow the sadness to fade away. I got out of bed, and went about my day. But as I did so, I continued to ask that question, over and over. Each time I did, and listened to the result, I was rewarded with a feeling of gentle satisfaction—and of meaning.

One of my primary goals in life is to be the most loving version of myself. This is actually a really hard goal for me, as someone from a repressed family who spent his youth struggling to just make contact his emotions, much less revel in the expression enthusiasm and love. I want to love deeply and I want to love well, and I’m committed to becoming the kind of person who can do that.

Loving well is a practice of attention. To nourish someone, you need to pay attention to what they want and need. You need to experiment, and see how they react. It’s an active process of discovery that never truly ends. You can always learn to love someone better, as you uncover more and more about them, and grow more skilled at your responses. You’ll never love someone perfectly, but careful attention is transformative. We crave that kind of attention. We crave to give it, too.

This applies to more than just people. I’ve become increasingly convinced that the human mind naturally gravitates towards animism. We tend to feel like we have a relationship with everything in our life, from our apartment to our house plants to the weather. Tending to a garden can be as satisfying as caring for another human being, and invoke similar energy. We logically know that our car doesn’t have feelings, but we often treat it like it does.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell drew a distinction between two different sorts of relationships: between myself and an “it” (I-it) and between myself and a “thou” (I-thou). An I-it is a relationship between me and something I see as an object, something to be manipulated into giving me what I want. It’s a transactional relationship, usually one-sided. An I-thou relationship is with something or someone I want to honour. I am invested in their wellbeing for its own sake. I might benefit from the relationship, but not at their expense. There is an element of the sacred to it.

When I move through the world asking “How would this want to be loved?”, my actions become more meaningful. How would my cat like to be loved? How would my houseplants? How about the dishes I’m washing?

When I treat the dishes in the sink as a “thou”, I handle them with more care. I think about where they’re being placed. I take my time washing them. I get to practice being loving in this most mundane of actions. And somehow, dishwashing becomes much more meaningful. I feel like I added some beauty to the world. When I repeat that throughout my day, in as many contexts as possible, my felt sense of the world shifts.

My cat lives a luxurious life, wanting for nothing, and we have a very loving relationship. But asking the question “how does she want to be loved?” sharpens my attention in each interaction. I have to stop assuming I “know” what she wants and needs, and notice what’s actually happening. What kind of pets is she responding to the most, what is she shying away from? These are tiny gestures, in the grand scheme of things, but I imagine how different our relationship could be over the next few years if I am truly committed to paying attention to how she wants to be loved.

Loving well is hard. It requires constant balance and prioritization. The fragmented parts of my psyche are also part of what I want to love well, so I want to balance that with loving those around me. There’s no room for martyrdom, for sacrificing myself pointlessly for the sake of others. If I want to love my friends as best I can, it follows that I need an abundance of self-love, so that I can give to them from that abundance. I must pay attention to my own capacities.

Sometimes, that means letting go. “Can I truly love this person/project/object the way I want it to?” is a question that may lead to a firm “no”, in which case we need to practice release. Very few people want to be clung to by someone who can’t fully love them, and yet that’s a common occurrence. If I can’t love something well, after trying my best to understand and meet them where they are, the best thing I can do is step away.

A human’s being job is to love. That’s the only universal duty that makes sense to me. It encompasses all my aspirations: nurturing my own capacities through self love and self care, accepting others as they are, paying careful attention to the world around me, striving to transform internal and external experiences, and creating external results that amplify love. And yet, in the moment, it’s easy to drift away from that purpose.

You can try it right now: what’s pulling at your attention? Is it a person, or a project, or an object or a craving or a sadness or a fear? What does it want from you? What would nurture it? What would nourish it?

The one question I want to ask, over and over, for the rest of my life: how would you like to be loved?