Finding love sometimes feels like an insurmountable journey - a doomed quest to roam the globe until you find that person, that job, that hobby, that place. That one thing that’s missing. That one hole that, once plugged, will make you feel loved. But what if love was waiting for you on the sidewalk outside your house? Or in the branch of a tree on your way to the grocery store? Or swirling past your feet in the wind?

What if finding love was so much easier than we ever thought?

I don’t have that answer, the equation that will help me feel loved, a sum I could share to help you feel loved too. But I do have a pen and I do have paper.

Sometimes, when love feels farther away than ever, I sit down with that pen and that paper, and I write love notes.

After folding them carefully into little squares, I leave my house and wander the neighborhood, tucking love into chain link fences, leaving it on window sills and in between the leaves on low-hanging branches. And I feel lighter. Like love is closer, more possible. Like maybe it’s been in my hand, all this time.

Sure, the notes might blow away or disintegrate in the rain. They might fall, unnoticed, into a crack in the bricks to grow dusty. But my hope is that each one is found by the right person at the right time. That whoever finds that note feels a quick shot of light in their day, a small burst of love that was needed right at that moment.

Maybe finding love is as simple as transcribing whatever love you have to give onto paper and scattering it wherever you happen to be.