Unexpectedly, this particular birthday turned out to be a night full of romance. Friends and family sang and laughed and danced and wrote Happy Birthday messages on the giant cardboard cut-out of me as a toddler that my parents had blown up into a lifesize version. As I watched them, I saw the love in my mum’s big heart, in my dad’s gentle kindness, in my brother’s deep understanding. It was in my friendships too: in one friend’s sensitivity, in another’s faith. It was in the new experiences I had shared with colleagues and journalism college friends, as I forged a career that meant something to me for the first time, and in the old history I shared with university flatmates, whose hugs still felt like home. Seeing these people sitting side by side, who saw all the versions of me – and I them – reminded me that we were each responsible for tiny pieces of each other’s hearts and happiness. It wasn’t only that this night made me realize life was full of different types of love, but that the capacity to love exists inside each of us – and our task is to tap into it. Instead of waiting for love, I could choose it. I could notice and listen and pay better attention to the people already in my life. I saw then that my search for love had been distracting me from the very thing I was looking for. Instead of asking, ‘Will I ever find love?’ I needed to ask a better question: ‘How could I love better?’ The first part of finding love had been to look inside myself. The second was to practise looking out.