Imagine this.

One day, our children will learn about love at school. They will take classes in love and self-esteem, explore the meaning of “I love you,” learn to listen to their hearts, and be encouraged to follow their joy. It will be normal for parents to help their children learn how to love and be loved. Adults won’t be content just to read romantic novels or watch rom-com movies; they will seek out friends and lovers who are interested in real love and who want to become more loving men and women.

One day, every society on our planet will honor and celebrate the importance of love. Politics without love will be a thing of the past. Leaders who demonstrate love-based values, like service and compassion, will be elected for their vision, their courage, and their strength of character. Economists will teach the world that money does not work without love. They will offer us love-based economic policies that eradicate poverty and hunger and help us to experience real abundance and freedom.

One day, all the great professions will include love in their training syllabi and core values. Medical doctors will treat their patients with love, and psychologists will teach their patients about love. Physicists will teach us that separation is an “optical delusion” and that oneness is reality. Biologists will teach us that the survival of the species depends on cooperation, not competition. Architects and lawyers will help us to build a society on love. And ecologists will show us how to love our planet more.

One day, the major religions will recognize a God of unconditional love, and they will stop teaching people to fear God. Never again will we go to war in the name of God. Theologians and philosophers, humanists and atheists, will set aside their differences for the sake of love, and they will teach us that love is stronger than fear, that only love is real, and that, ultimately, love is the key to our enlightenment and evolution. And all the while, the artists of the day will serenade us and entertain us with their plays of love.

Imagine that.

That day is not here yet, I know. I believe it will come, though. Our world must evolve in the direction of love if it is to have a future. Each of us is called to do something, in the name of love, to make sure that humanity comes to understand itself and is able to choose love over fear.

The word loveability might be new to you. You can’t find a definition for it in any standard dictionary. Not yet, anyway. Language is always evolving, as are we, and so one day you will find a dictionary that carries a definition for loveability. And if I am asked to help wordsmith the entry for loveability, I will recommend something simple like “the ability to love and be loved.”

My new book, Loveability, is a meditation on love. It addresses the most important thing you will ever learn. All the happiness, health, and abundance you experience in life comes directly from your ability to love and be loved. This ability is innate, not acquired. It does not need to be taught afresh, in the way you might learn some new algebra theory or memorize lines from Romeo and Juliet. It is a natural ability that is encoded in the essence of who you are. Any learning feels more like remembering something you have always known about.

To write Loveability, I have drawn on a lifetime of experiences and conversations with my parents, my brother, my friends, my wife, and, more recently, my two young children. Over the years, I have engaged in dialogues on love with philosophers, biologists, priests, business leaders, physicists, and mystics. Most of all, writing Loveability was inspired by what I can best describe as a process of inner listening. Each time I sat at my desk to write, I’d begin with a few moments of stillness, and then ask love to teach me about love. I did this with the full awareness that I wasn’t “talking” to something outside of myself. This was an inner attunement. I share this so as to emphasize that loveability isn’t really learned from books, public programs, or counseling sessions (as helpful as that is), but that it’s learned by letting the love that is your true nature teach you how to love and be loved.