Kindness, patience, selflessness, understanding, and forgiveness are manifestations of love. Love is a smile, a wave, a kind comment, and a compliment. Love is sacrifice, service, and selflessness. Usually our love will be shown in our day-to-day interactions with people; a key factor will be our ability to recognize someone’s need and then respond to it. If we could look into each other’s hearts and understand the unique challenges each of us faces, I think we would treat each other much more gently, with more love, patience, tolerance, and care.
There is one virtue -- one quality that can solve all the world’s ills, cure all the hatred, and mend every wound: If we only learned to love our fellowman as our brothers and sisters, this would give us compassion. Will compassion for others bring light into the darkness? Will it allow us to part the clouds and see clearly? Yes, for though we are all born blind, through the light of love we can see past darkness and illusion and understand things as they really are.
The secret is to love everyone you meet. From the moment you meet them. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Start from the position that they are good. Most people will respond and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you can then achieve the most wonderful things. But get rid of any of the jerks that let you down. Keep smiling and giving to people and you will be rewarded.
One thing I have learned is that there are different degrees of love, ranging from the love of mankind, your community, or people you give service to, all the way up to the love you have for your one and only, the person you are in a committed relationship with, and many different degrees in between. The same can be said for friendship, and friends can move from one degree to another at different times.
Love means putting someone else's happiness before your own, the degree to which you do that, of course, depends on where that person falls on the spectrum noted above. For love of community we may sacrifice some of our self-interest for the good of the whole (this has been called 'Civic Virtue"). The greater the degree of love we have for someone, the greater the importance of their happiness should be to us. If we truly love someone it should lead us to modify our behavior toward them, we would try harder not to cause them pain.