Beauty is well-known as Love’s snare. Soft, delicate, lovely features call out from across the room or through a screen. They pull us in.

Such beauty was always common, but our age has made it nearly universal. Anyone can change their look and everyone can watch. Once common, now this kind of beauty is cheap. Like electricity it’s still good, it might even be essential, but it’s everywhere and we take it for granted.

Less well-known than how beauty affects Love is Love’s effect on Beauty, though the effect is far greater. The lover’s mind can see what others can’t. Where the many see a tree, the lover sees a thousand little leaves bouncing together in the wind. Such are her thousand little details—they lay bare her way of being. Once seen, the world is rich.

Those who’ve not loved can’t understand. The many will say she looks like her sister, her mother, or her friend. That this tree looks just like that tree. The lover sees more. All he sees is real Beauty, like a leaves in the wind or birdsong in the air.