Fish In the Afternoon

1. Love Intentionally – Seek to love yourself, others, and the world each day, allowing yourself to fail while also returning to that intention again and again.

2. Love Habitually – Through loving intentionally, seek to practice love so that it becomes a second nature, becoming a part of your everyday life.

3. Love Abdundantly – Take each act, expression, and relationship of love as valuable in itself, without the need to compare it or measure it against others.

4. Love Carefully – In taking each form of love as valuable in itself, be attentive to the different needs and boundaries expressed in those forms of love, being careful to not impose your will on others.

5. Love Vibrantly – Take joy in who and what you love and in your own expressions of love, allowing yourself to feel that joy without shame and valuing the depths of your own love and the love of others.

6. Love Attentively – When loving someone, love them in the concrete particularity of who they are. Do not impose your own expectations or idealizations, but be attentive to who they are in themselves.

7. Love Concretely – Practice love through acts of concrete care and compassion that are attentive to the needs and desires of those you love, demonstrating love through action.

8. Love Transcendentally – See the love you have for each being as a love that is interconnected with all things, as expressing something transcendent and immeasurable within not just your experience, but the experience of those you love and in the fabric of the world itself.

9. Love Fiercely – Love with a concern and drive for the happiness and well-being of yourself, others, and the world, allowing yourself to express that love in acts of solidarity and compassion, seeing love as intimately connected with justice.

10. Love Tenderly – Be attentive to the emotional complexity of those you love, remembering to be kind and gentle in all that you do, and holding them in both the joys and difficulties of life.

Image: Intérieur aux deux verres by Marius Borgeaud (1923)