On Loving People You Don’t Even Know.  Or, Why Agape Is an Evolutionary Superpower

There’s a kind of love that doesn’t get talked about much. It’s not romantic or familial. It’s not dramatic or even personal. It’s just this quiet, unshiney love that some part of you might feel, for strangers, for passersby, for someone crying on the sidewalk or struggling to carry a stroller up the subway stairs.

It’s not performative. It’s not needy. It’s not leaky. It’s just … human.

This kind of love: agape, or the love of humankind, is often minimized in our culture. Sometimes even mocked. We’re taught to be skeptical of it, to tighten up around it, to act like it’s naïve or overly sensitive or some kind of emotional misfire. But I’ve come to believe this love is not only real—it’s natural. It’s biologically encoded. It’s one of the most functional and evolutionarily productive things about us.

And while the term agape has deep religious roots, I’m using it here in a fully secular way: to describe a real, observable, embodied form of care that helps humans survive and thrive. Nature gave us this. It’s not sentimental fluff, it’s strategy. Species that care for each other survive longer. Communities that cooperate outlive the ones that fracture. The human impulse to soften, to help, to slow down for one another. It works.

And yet, we rarely talk about this kind of love as a daily practice. We often don’t name it, not out loud, not even to ourselves. But naming it matters. Language has power. Giving this love a name makes it more real. It helps us recognize it when it shows up, and honor it instead of brushing it off like static.

I see it all the time walking the streets of New York. A tourist looks lost. A kid wipes out on a scooter. Someone tries to carry a stroller up the subway stairs. And over and over again, people help. No spotlight. No payoff. Just a quiet impulse to care.

I see this kind of love all the time walking the streets of New York. We’ve all witnessed moments when someone steps toward a conflict—not with force, but with steadiness. You can feel them regulating their own nervous system before they intervene, helping others stop before things escalate. And then there are the geese. During baby goose season on Riverside Drive, when the paths are crowded with runners, bikers, and kids on scooters, I’ve never once seen a person not slow down. It’s like the entire city silently agrees to care for these little families. And then there was the time a little boy got stuck on a subway car just as his father stepped off. The doors closed—and suddenly, the whole subway car came alive like white blood cells around a wound. Strangers teamed up, conspired, soothed him, worked together to get him back to his dad. Nobody knew each other. Everybody cared. It felt completely natural.

It’s goose season on Riverside Drive, when baby goslings take over the grass and bike paths. Scores of them. People speed by on bikes and skateboards and in full sprint. And yet, I have never once seen someone not slow down. It’s like an entire city has silently agreed to care for these geese. I’ve been counting: not one dead baby goose. Not one.

We don’t always talk about this love, but it’s here. It lives in us. And when we notice it, when we let ourselves feel it, it strengthens something inside. It reminds us who we are. Not in an ego-boosting way. In a truth-revealing way.

And here’s something else I’ve learned: our capacity to feel and give this kind of love begins with our ability to receive it. We are born with that capacity. But if, at some point in our lives, it became unsafe, or too vulnerable, to stay open to receiving love, we may have learned to hide that part of ourselves. To protect something incredibly precious. The core of who we are.

So we build structures around our hearts. And when that happens, our affective receptive capacity, the ability to take in care, can get sealed off. Not because we’re broken, but because we’re brilliant.

For people who’ve had to do that, agape might feel foreign. They might not recognize it. Or they might not trust it. But what’s missing isn’t the love—it’s the blueprint for letting it in. The good news is: blueprints can be rewritten.

That work often begins not with grand gestures of giving, but with small moments of noticing. Watching the world. Looking for care in motion. And if that feels like too much—if it overwhelms or confuses—see if you can let in just a pinprick. A single moment. One stranger slowing down, one person holding the door, one dog curled up next to a lonely person on a bench.

And by “letting it in,” I mean something very specific: mindfulness. Noticing what happens in your body when you witness care. That’s the medicine. That’s how the blueprint updates. When care has been unfamiliar or painful in the past, our nervous system can develop a kind of emotional Teflon—so love just slides right off. Mindfulness pierces that, gently. Slowly. In a hydrated, humane way.

Because sometimes, the moment we begin to let care in, we also start to feel the grief of how long it’s been missing. How alone we’ve felt. How much it would’ve meant to have someone stop and help then. And that’s one heart, too.

So go slow. Let it come in drops. But let it matter.

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Ways to Notice Love You Don’t Know You Have

• When you see someone struggling, just notice the impulse to help, even if you don’t act on it. Feel the warmth of that impulse in your chest, or the tug in your gut. That’s love.

• If someone helps you, see if you can pause for a moment. Let the help register. Feel the part of you that softens in response.

• Look for tenderness between strangers. Between people and animals. Between people and the natural world. Let yourself feel it. Not just observe it, feel it.

• Try saying to yourself: “This is what care looks like.” Let it in. Let it update you.

• And if nothing in you wants to notice, that’s OK too. Maybe the kindest thing is just to wonder if love might still be out there, even if it hasn’t landed on you yet.