Love is about bottomless empathy, born our of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are.  And this why love, as I understand it, is always specific.  Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being.  Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.  When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting.  But when you go our and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them.  And who knows what might happen to you then?

Jonathan Franzen, “Liking is for Cowards.  Go for What Hurts,” New York Times, Sunday, May 29, 2011.