"Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole."

—Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

We tend to experience love as something that happens between particular people—something we fall into, or build carefully, or lose. In that framework, love depends on finding the right person or the right circumstances. When those change, love can seem to disappear with them.

Fromm suggests something wider. Love as orientation—as the basic quality of how we meet what is in front of us—is less fragile than love as feeling. It may show up in how we listen to a stranger, how we hold someone else's difficulty, how we allow what is happening to actually reach us rather than being managed from a careful distance. This kind of love may not require the right conditions. It may simply require a willingness to remain open to what is already here.