We all desire to love and to be loved, and we all know the pain of loneliness and lost love. The desire to understand others and to be understood is at bottom an attempt to feel connected. We are simply not whole by ourselves and require the connection with others that comes most completely through love to regain our sense of wholeness. This is perhaps the most pressing problem of the modern world— loneliness, alienation and disconnectedness. Much of what is said about the value of the individual and his or her right to live as he or she sees fit contributes to people “doing their own thing” at the expense of building relationships with others that might give them this connectedness and satisfy this deep yearning. Of course, there are many ways to relate to others. We can do it through friends and family. We can do it through our jobs and our hobbies. And we can even do it through modern technology, e.g., social media. But ultimately, it all comes down to being kind and loving to the people we interact with. So nurture the yearning to love and be loved, first and foremost by making yourself worthy of love.
