The best lesson I’ve learned about love is this: the greatest gift I can offer another person is to stop whatever I’m doing, listen — really listen — to what they’re saying, and then make the effort to see the world through their eyes. It sounds simple enough, but it’s not, especially when the other person is unhappy, whether it’s a lover, a relative, or a friend. It’s even harder when that unhappiness, at least from their point of view, has something to do with me.

My first instinct is to get defensive, which derails the whole process. When I’m busy defending myself, I’m not listening anymore — I’m talking. I’m explaining. I’m justifying. And when I’m busy doing that, I’ve already lost my chance to stand in their shoes and try to understand their pain.

Another bad habit I have is trying to fix the problem. I want to jump right over their feelings and head straight to solutions. But that’s not what people usually need. If someone is self-aware enough, they’ll stop me and say, “I didn’t come here for you to fix it. I just want you to hear me. I want you to understand that what I’m feeling is real.” I get that because I feel the same way when I’m vulnerable and somebody tries to sidestep my emotions to get to “fixing” me.

The truth is, complaining — both from others and in ourselves — isn’t about wallowing. It’s about connecting to the deeper emotions that fuel our reactions. It’s a window into what’s really going on underneath the surface.

When frustration or anger shows up, it’s worth stepping back and asking: is this truly about the other person? Or is it about me — my old baggage, my own fatigue, my hunger, my fear? Just because I’m irritated doesn’t mean the other person is at fault. It could just as easily be that I’m tired or stressed and it’s easier to snap at someone else than sit with my own discomfort.

Any good Buddhist will tell you that others aren’t responsible for how we react; we are. Rational Emotive Therapy says something similar: “It’s not what’s happening; it’s what you’re telling yourself about what’s happening.” In other words, our minds have a way of turning small things into big stories if we aren’t paying attention.

Now, I know some people bristle at this idea. They’ll say, “What about real suffering? Real injustice?” And they’re right. Horrible things happen. Nothing I say is meant to gloss over that. Jews being murdered in concentration camps during World War II is a horror that no amount of mental reframing could erase. But even there, Viktor Frankl — a man who lived through it — made a radical observation: that while almost everything could be stripped away, one freedom remained — the freedom to choose one’s attitude. As he wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Frankl’s point wasn’t that suffering wasn’t real. It was that within suffering, there could still be love. Even in the deepest darkness, prisoners in the camps could find ways to be kind, to care for one another, to keep their humanity alive. Frankl said the salvation of man is through love — and in love.

And that brings me back around to love and what I’ve come to believe: real love is choosing to listen with an open heart and a closed mouth. It’s standing quietly in someone else’s story long enough to say, without rushing to fix or defend, “I hear you. I see you.”

Because isn’t that what we all want in the end? To be seen. To be understood.

And that — that simple, sacred act of truly seeing another person — is, to me, what love looks like.