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I love my wife.
I love my children.
I loved my parents and honor their memory.

But some of the other people I love, I barely know. For example, the young woman at the coffee place with a hand drawn smile on her corporate nameplate, who always looks like she is not sure why she is here as opposed to a mountain peak or a glamorous nightclub, when she asks if I want room for cream. The couple in front of my house who walk calmly while their five chihuahuas skitter around their feet in a tangle of leashes two or three times a day. The guy who sits on the park bench, hunched over a crossword puzzle while he looks out over the bay searching for a word. I see these people as whole bodies. I see how their hands and bodies move, the slump of their shoulders, the tilt of their heads. They are creatures like me, inhabiting bodies as awkward or as beautiful as mine, making their way through a world which sometimes welcomes them and sometimes doesn’t. They are sources of wonder and delight. When I look at them, I love them. It’s not romantic love, or oldest-friend love or familial love, but it is love. I don’t know what else to call it. Their reality is beautiful to me. I watch them like I might watch a bird in flight.

But when it comes to my friends and relatives, I often don’t have enough distance from them to love them. When I’m with them, I often want something from them. I need their approval, or I want their affection. Sometimes I’m jealous or competitive. Maybe something hurts, and I want them to help, and then I get irritated when they don’t. Often when I’m with them I think more about me than about them.

It sounds stupid, but I need to treat my friends more like strangers; without contention, without judgement. I need to see them from a distance, from top to bottom, and appreciate their dignity and uniqueness like I do with people I don’t know.

Then I’ll be able to love them better.