loving: affection

C.S. Lewis, in The Four Loves says the following:

"The especial glory of Affection is that it can unite those who most emphatically, even comically, are not [´made for each other´]; people who, if they had not found themselves put down by fate in the same household or community, would have had nothing to do with each other. If Affction grows out of this their eyes begin to open. Growing fond of "old so-and-so", at first simply because he happens to be there, I presently begin to see that there is "something in him" after all. The moment when one first says, really meaning it, that though he is not "my sort of man" he is a very good man "in his own way" is one of liberation. It does not feel like that; we may feel only tolerant and indulgent. But really we have crossed a frontier. That "in his own way" means that we are getting beyond our own idiosyncracies, that we are learning to appreciate goodness or intelligence in themselves, not merely goodness or intelligence flavoured and served to suit our own palate....The truly wide taste in humanity will find something to appreciate in the cross-section of humanity whom one has to meet every day. In my experience it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who "happen to be there". Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed." (Pages 37-38 of the 1981 Fount Paperbacks edition)

And I have included it because it describes life here well - especially the last line :) And it describes my growing process of learning to delight in the people around me, who, if not for our both being present here, I would never have been blessed to know.