Entry 05:
When my husband and I learned we were having a second child, a quiet question surfaced (that I’m sure many people ask): What if we don’t love this one as much as we’ve loved the first? Our second son arrived, and we discovered that love doesn’t get split—it expands. It is a wild phenomenon, and our capacity for love grew more than we ever thought possible.
But the question is valid. What happens when we add more people into our lives? What if we welcome our neighbors? Strangers? Enemies? Is there enough love in us for all of these human relationships? To paraphrase Meghan Sullivan’s recent TED talk, c you really love everyone?
In a world heavy with burnout and cynicism, the idea of loving such a wide circle of people admittedly feels daunting. When we learn about tragedies and injustices from afar, accessing love for those affected can feel difficult. It’s a bit out of reach. But there may be a different way to expand our capacity for love.
“The first step toward love is a common sharing of a sense of mutual worth and value,” says Howard Thurman, a philosopher, theologian, and civil rights leader, among many roles. “This cannot be discovered in a vacuum or in a series of artificial or hypothetical relationships. It has to be in a real situation, natural, free.” According to Thurman, expansive love begins with seeing strangers as neighbors. This kind of shift in our view of others asks us to get up close, to “get proximate.”
Lawyer and activist, Bryan Stevenson, is on a mission to help others get proximate to the pain of others. In his work with death-row clients, he discovered the incomparable power of getting close to the marginalized. The stories and experiences that came from Stevenson’s time with these clients shaped his view of humanity—the way he saw people who were previously at a distance. When he drew close, he learned this: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
Both Thurman and Stevenson show us that interaction with real people and real situations is the way to develop genuine love for others. But this is a risky endeavor. Putting yourself in places of other people’s pain, or societal injustices, or even simply uncomfortable situations, makes us vulnerable. We might experience pain ourselves—rejection, misunderstanding, being taken advantage of—or we might (we fear) make things worse, even with good intentions. Relationships are risky. But these raw, real encounters are what Thurman says produce a shared sense of our “mutual worth and value.”
If you’re open to having the love ethic guide you, begin with proximity—the real, clumsy, human-to-human interactions. Where can we move toward pain or injustice? Start small: serve a meal to unhoused neighbors, mentor or tutor a student. And sometimes, love demands more: reshaping our work, our home, our community.
Stevenson’s emphasis on proximity argues that expansive love, a love for every person, is possible. And Thurman’s invitation to pursue real, formative relationships agrees with this argument. Unlimited love is not out of reach. The journey begins with moving in for a closer look.
These dispatches are co-created by writer Jess Lyons and ECG anchor Adam Gustine. Edited and shepherded for the series by the Love Squad.
