Love for Others
For years, I assumed that when I felt alone, the answer was simple: just go out and make some friends. But honestly, that was often when I felt the most alone. Why did socializing feel so alienating? It had everything to do with the masks I was wearing. The more I tried to project an artificial image, the more exhausting it became. Like so many people, I had started to pursue connection, but I confused connection with popularity. One fills you up, while the other leaves you constantly hungry for more.
Connection is not a performance to impress the other person. It is the simple decision to show interest in someone else’s reality.
Erik Thor, Why I Love
Presence Over Performance
Giving back the laptop
On my first day of high school, the municipality gifted me my very own laptop. Every class, we stared into a laptop. Every break, they stared into a laptop. Looking into a screen for so long, I started to feel numb, cold, lethargic, and apathetic. Two weeks into my first semester, I walked into the school counselor’s office, asked to transfer out of the sciences into the humanities, and slid the free laptop back across her desk.
Human in control
This summer at work, our backlog climbed past a hundred open tickets. Feeling behind made me cut corners on human beings. I avoided meetings, set up an AI workflow, and shrank my replies to two cold sentences because I thought people were inefficient and I had to be a machine. When I treated my colleagues as a queue of tickets to clear, I missed the human reality underneath their requests.
Someone Who Feels the Same
For years, I lived alongside thousands of people, but often, I didn’t even see them as people.
When I went to a cafe, the barista was just an automaton, here to serve me a coffee. So many social encounters were pure transactions. When I slowed down, I realized they were human beings with their own dreams, heartbreaks, and fatigue. I started asking how their day was going. I started using people’s names. Involving others in my day with a simple smile changed my entire experience of walking through a city.
I remember attending a conference where I arrived late because of train delays. By the time I got there, everyone had already formed groups. Exhausted from the trip, I stood there feeling awkward and out of place. I messaged a friend about how lonely I felt.
He suggested something simple: open your eyes and see if someone else seems to feel the same way.
I looked around the room, and I realized that several other people looked just as hesitant and lonely as I was. That insight lifted the pressure. I approached them and started asking simple questions about their lives, their values, and what brought them there. I sat with them and listened. I stopped viewing conversation as a performance. I was not trying to be somebody else anymore; I was just being.
”True connection happens when you drop the mask, let go of the need for applause, and meet other people with curiosity, honesty, and shared presence. Real connection does not ask you to stand out or put on a show. It asks you to put the phone face-down on the table, drop the polished persona, and listen to the person sitting across from you.”
Micro-test quiz with 10 questions
Love For Others Match
Check off statements above to calculate your match score.
Reflection & Practice
Presence in Your Relationships
Think of a relationship where you have felt distant, guarded, or disappointed. Have you been treating that connection as a transaction, or waiting for them to make the first move? What would it look like to offer an open, unconditional conversation today?
Continue Your Journey
Take the Eight Practices of Love Test
Discover your balance between caring for yourself and caring for the people you love across 48 reflective questions.
Explore the Book Why I Love
Read Chapter 7 of Why I Love on how I learned to drop the performance, stay human in control, and form unconditional friendships.
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