This likely would have been timelier in mid-February, but recently I have been thinking about the meaning of love. My older brother will be tying the knot in October and I’m happy for him. I’m happy because he’ll have someone, but also because it’s obvious that he and his fiancé really love each other. And they do it the right way.

We often confuse the urge to possess for the act of loving. It is a common human reflex: We see something beautiful — a wildflower in the muskeg or a person who illuminates our lives — and our first instinct is to reach out and claim it. But that’s just an act of possession, and it isn’t truly love.

There is a Buddhist teaching that illustrates this distinction with simple clarity. If you like a flower, you pluck it. You take it home, put it in a vase and watch it slowly wither, separated from its roots. But if you love a flower, you water it daily.

To love the flower is to appreciate it exactly where it is, allowing it the freedom to bloom on its own terms. One is an act of possession; the other is an act of nourishment. When we pluck the flower, we are not loving the flower — we are loving the way the flower makes us feel, and we sacrifice the flower’s life to preserve that feeling for a few days.

This mirrors a profound observation by the author Anne Morrow Lindbergh. In her private writings, she deconstructed the “gift” of love that so many of us offer, noting how it can often feel more like an obligation than a liberation. She wrote:

“People talk about love as though it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers. And a lot of people give love like that — just dump it down on top of you, a useless strong-scented burden. But love is not like that. Love is a power, a flow that energizes you to give other things out of it. It’s not something you possess, that you hand over like a Hallmark card. It is something you are inside of, that you give out of.”

When we treat love as a “strong-scented burden,” we are essentially handing someone a bouquet of expectations. We are saying, “I have given this to you, and now you must maintain it.” This type of love requires the recipient to carry the weight of the giver’s needs. It is static, heavy, and, ultimately, it dies — just like the plucked flower in the vase.

True love, as both Buddhist philosophy and Lindbergh suggest, is a “flow.” It is not the flower itself, but the sunlight and the water that allow the flower to exist. It is an environment we create that allows another person to grow into their highest self, without the requirement that they belong to us or serve our ego.

In our lives, we have ample opportunity to practice this. Whether in our families, our friendships or our connection to the land, we can choose to be the person who waters the garden rather than the one who clears it for a centerpiece.

By letting go of the need to possess, we find that love isn’t a resource that runs out. It is an energy that, once tapped into, provides us with the strength to be kinder, more patient and more present. Love is not the prize at the end of the race; it is the wind at our backs.