To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way.
— Plato
GRATITUDE
— Plato
GRATITUDE
Affection is treated here as something trainable rather than merely suffered. What you find lovely is shaped by what you have been exposed to and what you have practised attending to, which makes taste in people, work and art partly a matter of education. Loving badly is often a case of never having learned to see well.
You can disagree with the tidiness of that and still use it. Notice what you are drawn to and ask what taught you to want it. Then spend deliberate time near something better made than what you usually choose, and see whether your appetite adjusts.
Has anyone ever taught you how to love someone well?
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.