Every so often I stumble across the quote, “The highest form of love is consideration.” Each time I read it, I pause and linger a bit. It usually leaves me reflecting. It is only one, succinct sentence, strung together by seven words, but it showcases perfectly what love feels like when in its purest form.
At some point, you have likely come across people in your life who are the opposite of considerate. Whether you realized it during introductions or years later, you eventually understood that they were incapable of truly seeing you and holding space for all the things that make you who you are.
Their presence in your life can only be described as unsafe. Regardless of whether their inability to consider you comes from a lack of awareness, emotional intelligence, selfishness, or maybe even all three, it does not really matter. Ultimately, they are not capable of holding your well-being securely in their hands. That is not only the opposite of what love truly is, but a presence that will eventually erode you, your sense of self, your peace, and your stability.
It would be easier to say to watch out for people who steamroll you, who do not hesitate when they make you uncomfortable, or who view you as an extension of their own life, while ignoring that you already have your own, but even that does not dig quite deep enough.
True consideration sees you in your entirety and strives to respect it, protect it, and cherish it. It sees you as a full-fledged individual with your own needs, wants, desires, fears, likes, and dislikes. Consideration creates the foundation for emotional safety. Without emotional safety, a genuine connection cannot exist. Consideration is knowing that your presence has the power to affect another person deeply.
Finally, consideration is a quiet act of making space for someone else’s well-being alongside your own, without assuming access to what is not freely given.
