Why connection makes our brief journey radiant
The Spark of Love
I plug in the Christmas lights on our tree.
My five-year-old daughter’s face lights up.
My face lights up from looking at her face,
and her face lights up more
when she sees me respond to her joy.
Moments like this show how love multiplies. One spark sets off another, and suddenly life feels brighter, warmer, more meaningful.
Love is contagious. When one heart glows, others do too. A room filled with people who love each other is warmer than any fireplace.
Companions on the Journey
We are all passengers on the same train — a train bound, eventually, for oblivion. But what a gift it is that while we ride, we get glimpses of wonder. And more than that: we get to share those glimpses with others. Some fellow travelers step off before us, and we will step off before others, but much of the joy is in the sharing.
To love and to be loved is one of life’s greatest privileges.
There is the love of parents, the love of children, the love of friends. Each is profound in its own way. But perhaps the most astonishing is the love of a romantic partner — the singular experience of finding a person to whom we feel a unique attraction and connection. To find such a person is miracle enough. To have them love us back is bliss.
The Many Faces of Love
- Parental love: protective, tender, formative. The parent holds the child at night, whispering comfort in the dark, long before the child can return words. That bond becomes a compass for life.
- Children’s love: pure delight. A toddler’s spontaneous hug, a child’s beaming face when you show up at their game or recital. Their love is unfiltered, unstrategic — a reminder of innocence.
- Friendship: the chosen family. Late-night talks that unburden the soul, inside jokes that endure decades, the loyalty of someone who stands with you when the world doesn’t. Aristotle said it simply: “Without friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.”
- Romantic love: risk and wonder. The spark of attraction grows into shared life — a partnership of laughter, struggle, and devotion. To wake beside someone who knows your flaws and chooses you anyway is among the most humbling and comforting experiences life offers.
Love wears many faces, and each enriches us in its own way.
The Soul’s Recognition
Finding a soulmate is not just about compatibility. It can feel like a primal spark of recognition — the moment when our authentic self can finally unfold to another. Life prior to that person becomes unimaginable.
Simone de Beauvoir put it beautifully: authentic love is the mutual recognition of two free beings, each respecting the other’s life. Real love does not shrink us. It enlarges us. Each person’s selfhood becomes richer because of the other.
When love is healthy, it is not possession but expansion. We do not dissolve into each other; we grow because of each other. Your world becomes bigger through mine, and mine through yours.
The Journey of Love
Picture two elderly people walking hand in hand through a park. Their steps are slow, their hands wrinkled, their words few. They have weathered decades together — laughter, arguments, children, illnesses, holidays, disappointments, triumphs.
There’s nothing flashy about the scene. And yet it moves us. Why? Because we sense that here is a story of love that endured — two free lives, side by side, making each other’s journey luminous.
That picture touches something universal: the longing not just to be admired, but to be known and cherished over time.
The Shadow of Loss
Of course, love carries risks. There are arguments, misunderstandings, and sometimes heartbreak. We may lose a loved one to another person, or to death itself. These can be among the most crushing blows we experience.
And yet, even in the pain, the gift remains. To have tasted love at all is a fortune. As Tennyson wrote: “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Grief is the shadow of love — but shadows exist only because light has shone.
A Daily Gratitude
Love, in all its forms, is fragile and fleeting. That’s part of what makes it precious.
Be grateful for every second of every day
that you get to spend with the people you love.
Tell them. Show them. Notice them. Because someday the train will move on, and what remains will be the memory of faces that once lit up when they saw yours.
Closing Thought
Love is not everything we need. We need purpose, dignity, and selfhood too. But love is one of life’s greatest gifts — perhaps the one that makes all the others worthwhile.
To love and be loved is to know that our days are not lived in vain. It is to discover that, however brief our journey, it can be radiant.
