~5 minute read

I have always wanted to write something titled “On…”. For some reason, people who wrote pieces like that always seemed incredibly knowledgeable to me — as if they knew everything about the subject and could see things I couldn’t.

Recently, though, I realized that these writers were not necessarily more knowledgeable than everyone else. They were simply deeply passionate about the thing they were writing on. I realized this because, while reading Proust, I caught myself replaying my thoughts over and over in my mind, wanting desperately to tell someone about them. So this piece comes partly from that feeling. Partly from wanting to have written something titled “On…”. And perhaps, also, simply because I love Proust.

During one of the busiest shifts I have ever had, a doctor I worked with noticed In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower in my bag and told me that he now saw me differently. When I asked why, he said he believed humanity could be divided into two kinds of people: those who have read Proust and those who have not.

At the time, I did not fully understand what he meant. But as I continued reading In Search of Lost Time, I began to. Proust has a quiet way of transforming your thoughts by moving gently through the landscape of your own life. He does not tell you directly what to feel; instead, he slips into your memories and catches you there. That is why I, too, have come to believe that everyone who reads him changes, even if only a little.

Proust made me think that much of what we feel does not truly come from the person in front of us, but from our own inner world. That love is not simply a feeling formed by someone else’s qualities, but also a kind of meaning we create within ourselves.

Because we want to love. It feels as natural as breathing.

And while loving, we make the other person lovable in our minds. We attach meaning to moments, filling in the empty spaces with our own emotions.

In truth, the person standing before us does not become important without the context we create and the meaning we assign to what happens between us. To a great extent, we shape people and events through our own perception. Once you realize this, you also begin to see that the outside world can touch your inner world only as much as you allow it to.

If you want very badly to love someone, even their harshest edges begin to soften in your eyes. If you want to dislike someone, even their smallest flaws begin to grow. Perhaps most of our relationships are shaped less by who the other person is, and more by how we choose to see them.

At first, this realization feels frightening. Because then you understand that part of love belongs less to the person being loved and more to our own capacity to love. But after a while, I realized there is also something profoundly freeing about this.

Sometimes, the person toward whom your love is directed may not matter as much as we think. Because love does not belong only to one person; it belongs to the way you experience and perceive the world. And that does not make what you felt any less real. On the contrary, those moments become real precisely because of the value you gave and the love you nurtured.

Perhaps this is why heartbreak no longer disappoints me in the same way. People leave. Relationships end. Things that once felt deeply meaningful can become unfamiliar. But having loved never loses its value.

Because love belongs, at least in part, to the person who feels it. It is something worth celebrating — something that expands us.

Perhaps what lasts is not people, but the way we learn to love life itself.

So let this piece be a small promise: to love more, to love without fear, and not to regret it, even if one day we lose it.