Love has never asked me to chase it. Only to answer when it calls.
Looking backward, I no longer see a life built from decisions. I see a life shaped by correspondence. Love writes back.
Again and again, something captured my attention before I had words to explain why. Beauty. Writing. Art. Design. Making. I answered the call without realizing that’s what I was doing.
As a little girl, I wore my grandmother’s high heels and carried her purse as though I belonged in them. In other moments, I proudly wore my grandfather’s hard hats, enchanted by the world he imagined and built. Before I could write real words, I drew pictures and made cards for my family. As soon as I could write, I filled pages with letters.
No one taught me to love those things. They seemed to arrive already alive inside me.
I never spent my childhood longing for math puzzles. Someone else was answering that correspondence. Mine was different.
Children have always made me wonder. Before anyone tells them who they should become, something has already begun calling their name.
One is drawn to music. Others to numbers, animals, or stories. They simply answer.
What about you? Before anyone told you who you should become…what quietly captured your heart?
I came to think of them as interests, talents, or passions. Today, I see them differently.
What if our deepest loves aren’t random?
What if love has been writing back?
And what if the life we’re meant to live doesn’t begin when we finally decide what we love, but when we recognize what has been calling us all along?
Correspondence
I have loved correspondence for as long as I can remember. Letters. Cards. Handwritten notes. Sending something thoughtful into the world, never knowing how it might be received.
Recently, I realized that correspondence may describe far more than the exchange of letters. It describes the exchange between our inner life and the world around us.
A beauty calls. Our attention answers.
A curiosity appears. Our feet follow.
A love arrives. Our hearts recognize it.
Then…a correspondence begins.
Love Writes Back
For years, I thought I was pursuing what I loved. Now I wonder if I was simply answering. I don’t know whether our deepest loves choose us before we choose them.
I only know that some of them arrive with the unmistakable feeling that we already belong to one another.
Perhaps that’s why they feel strangely familiar from the very beginning. Not because we’ve met them before, but because something inside us knows how to answer.
Love is not a destination. It is an ongoing correspondence.
Some invitations become lifelong conversations. Others don’t. Some letters never receive a reply. Some affections aren’t mutual.
That, too, is part of the correspondence.
When a conversation grows silent, I no longer spend my life trying to force another response. I have learned to gently turn toward the invitations that are still alive.
Love has never asked me to chase it. Only to answer.
Life keeps extending invitations. Our part is simply to respond.
R.S.V.P. Répondez s’il vous plaît. Please respond.
Maybe that’s all love has ever asked of us. Notice. Answer.
Love writes back.