(a warning: the word “love” shows up 17 times in this post)
Years ago, a friend taught me something beautiful. I’d asked him some dumb question like “so how do you like your new phone?” (Yes, this was back in those forgotten times when phones were actually different from one another, and genuinely new models came out every year.)
— So how is it, what’s the verdict?
— I love it, — my friend said, — but there’s a catch. See, as a rule I choose to love everything that’s mine. My car, my clothes, my phone. If I had a different one, I’d have told you the exact same thing — that I love it.
That simple thought lodged itself firmly in my heart. It’s true — if I already own a thing, what’s the point of not loving it? Especially when I get to make a conscious choice.
Yesterday a different friend asked me whether it matters to live in a place you like. And to give an honest answer, I went back through every apartment and every place I’d lived over the last 10 years. And I realized I had loved every single one.
I loved the apartment with the slanted ceilings in the center of Vilnius. The floors creaked and it was cold. But there was a little wood-burning stove, and from the kitchen window you could see the spire of an old church.
In Stockholm, one of our apartments was an hour from the city. But in the morning you might run into a moose. Or befriend the deer that came by in the evenings to eat the apples in the neighbor’s garden.
I loved every apartment we rented in Tallinn. One was 30 meters from a park and had a real bathtub. Another was tiny, but it had a real fireplace. A third looked out onto the Baltic Sea. And I went down to that sea every day, even when the snowy wind stung my face, made my nose run, and had me burrowing into my scarf. I loved that wind.
I loved the apartment in Andorra. Look out the window at the right angle and you’d catch mountains and snow. And one floor down there was a cyclists’ café. Yes, that’s exactly where I got hooked on cycling for good.
I loved our first apartment in Barcelona. It was full of the old landlord’s furniture, which seemed to have grown there along with the building itself, decades ago. But from the balcony you could watch them building the Sagrada Família. Watch one more row of blocks get added to a tower every month. Like sloths slowly, surely assembling an enormous Lego set.
And now, today. I woke up and decided again that today I will love my family. I choose to love walking the dog at seven in the morning. I choose to love my work. I choose to write my sister a letter and pour as much love into it as I can. I choose to love my friends and my people. I choose to try to love myself (that’s still the hardest one).
Tomorrow I’ll wake up and make all these choices again. And there will be love in them again.