Think back for a moment on that someone you know who lived a full life. You get the sense, don’t you, that they were on to something. That they had somehow cut through all the noise, and tuned themselves into a signal only they could hear. And they didn’t do this in spite of their work. Rather, they seemed to be doing it through their work. Their loves and their work were inextricably linked.

In their telling, “work” does not simply mean “job.” It is not merely manual or knowledge labor. Instead, “work” is anything of value they created for someone else.

Try to change your relationship to your fears. Don’t banish them. Don’t fight them. Don’t turn and face them down. Instead, see whether you can learn to honor your fears—which means listening to them, being curious about them, and admiring them as part of the real you. Do this—gently, generously, kindly—and they will show you what you truly love.

On your journey, you’re told to dismiss your fears, to confront your fears, to step outside of your comfort zone. Yet this is all so misleading. Your big choice in life is not “comfort or no comfort.” It is “love or no love.” When you step into things you love, you will feel fear. That’s not just OK, it’s fundamental. So fundamental, in fact, that if you’re doing something and you feel no fear, then you’ve lost your love.

So, take the path of fear, because the path of fear is the path of love.

Instead, a healthy life is one where you are in motion, where you are moving through life—all aspects of your life—in such a way that you draw strength and love from it, and this then gives you the energy you need to keep moving.

This means to live happily and fully, you have to express your loves. Yes, they spring from within you, but then they demand expression. You’ve got to get them out somewhere, somehow, turn them from loves into actions, from passions into contributions. And when you do, your life feels coherent and authentic, and you know, you just know, in every fiber of your being, that you are on your path.

What I missed, and what got me so lost in my personal life, was the emotional power of being seen for who I truly am. Love, in any relationship, is not protection—it is not someone reaching in and saving you from yourself.

Love is not diversity—it is not someone complementing your personality with different strengths.

Love is not similarity—it is not someone sharing your interests, or values, or dreams.

Love is someone seeing the fullness of you and wanting you to be the best possible version of you. This is what a relationship is for—any relationship, whether friend, business partner, sibling, or lover. It is for each person to do all they can to help the other express their uniqueness as powerfully as possible. Love’s goal is to make the other person bigger.

The engine of a good life is not the self, as John Marsden believed, but rather our connection to others, as Leo DeMarco’s life demonstrates. The movements of the engine are those feelings inside us that our ancestors passed down, from the biggest heartbreaks to the subtle sensations of camaraderie to the sadness of loss to the exhilarations of romantic love; or as Jon Kabat-Zinn called it, borrowing a line from Zorba the Greek, “the full catastrophe.” It’s there that the good life happens, in the real-time, momentary experience of connection.

You might be thinking right now, Okay, sure, but how? How do I change my relationships for the better? I can’t just snap my fingers. What would change even look like? Where do I start?

Changing your life—especially your habits of daily living—can be challenging. Many of us start out with the best of intentions to improve our lives, only to be overwhelmed by the force of our well-worn mental habits and the momentum of the culture we live in. It’s tempting when confronting the complexity of life to say, I’ve tried, but I just cannot figure this out. I’ll just go with the flow.