What is the manual for love? First of all, love comes with no manual.

Are there any rules for love? Let's see... Don't Cross Others. Be Considerate.

Those two rules lean into my next one:  Slow Down in Relationships.

Take your sweet time; hearing another means quieting personal voices; spacing out interruptions, the detours of one's attention. An attention span is like a bridge's: it only goes so far, holds so much, before it snaps, overloads under the wheels of heavy conversation. Heavy conversations are the kind that love generates. Do you hear my pain? Have you understood me? Are we in this bridge-crossing together?

Another rule for love: Obedience.

Of course, we're not animals here, but tell me one effect on you when your pet labradoodle follows your command to sit: Elation. Obedience provides the side-effects of love. It's what we do for each other that expresses love, beginning with obedience. Not as master and servant, but as wind and leaves. The leaves naturally obey the wind, fluttering all day even to the point of falling off the tree. Autumn leaves, the most golden ones, are especially obedient to the wind, to the point of severing their relationship to life.

And the final rule: Love To Your Life.

Love is more valuable than life. You will have this choice at some point in the manual of love: To give love for life. Or to give life for love. A little more clearly, which one would satisfy you more: To give up your love to hold on to life? Or to give up your life to hold on to love? Slow down now. (Rule 3) It's okay. Read it again.

I hope all the human beings looking at this right now chose the latter. Or we're in for some serious reckoning. A serious shaking of the leaves. To see which ones cling on to life. Which ones are ready to die. 

There! The few simple rules of love.  I'm sure there are others. I've only started this conversation. It's your turn to add me a few of your rules of love for this unpublishable manual.

July 2, 2026  11:05 AM