One of the most powerful ways of feeling seen and validated, is when you accept my offering of love — from the core of my being. And when my heart vote is taken as a vote of confidence about something being worth investigating to give to yourself, I feel understood, valued and more connected to you. Your trust in my taste applying to you too, is a way of letting my love into your heart. Telling me that you do, conveys that you feel comfortable, have no shame or fear of accepting my gift. All of the above builds and reinforces connection. Discovering later on that you found great value in the gift, once received, validates the trust and closes the loop.

The opening sentence is borrowed from a friend. It made me ponder what my own closest gifts have been in the past, and would be today.

My tweenage self’s greatest offerings of love, beside the partnering-up instinct of offering myself in relationship, were all gifts of culture: books like Ender’s Game that grew my empathy, mind and heart connection, the accapella harmonies of The Real Group, or computing delights such as the Amiga, powerful languages and editors such as lisp and Emacs, or expressive online fora high in signal and low in noise and friction, or high in vulnerability and self-disclosure and low in violence. Sharing is caring.

I have grown, co-created, been introduced to or stumbled upon other wonderful things in the world. All of the above sharing have continued, and I still feel co-gratitude when my girlfriend notes that quitting Windows made a notable dent in her typical day where she no longer fights its administrativia any more. But the impact of these have abated, after the truly life-changing discoveries started showing up on my radar.

Gifts of culture have increasingly been replaced with gifts of knowledge and tools for living. Making the world more wonderful to you has taken a step back — and making you more wonderful to yourself, a step forward.

I am still learning how to give love, and how to make myself more available for receiving love. Much of it is about letting go, of expectations, structures that make either giving or receiving to be conditional — on who I am, who you are, how we relate to one another, or how much I listen to my fears and stories, rather than how much I listen to you, and what really is going on.

Learning about what languages I can speak that make you really feel my love and learning myself what helps me really feel yours, as well as how to listen, hear and teach, being present with ourselves and one another, inviting you to reach deeper into this territory, bringing me further too, when I follow.

The general you. Librarians hold no monopolies on getting to love everyone.