Love Is All Around

A scavenger hunt for the operating system beneath Us vs Them

Photo by Danil Aksenov on Unsplash

Some mornings, the state of the world feels heavy. The headlines stack up. The nervous system tightens. And it can start to seem like hatred and greed are the only operating system left.

When that gloom shows up, I have a simple practice: I return to a film that’s become a kind of teacher for me.

I created a Love Actually (2003) AMP session in 2020, and it’s become an annual tradition since then. A way to realign. A way to remember what matters.

Lura and I watched it again this week. It brings me joy every time.

But this year something feels different.

My understanding of love has grown. It feels bigger now. Less fragile. More steady in the messiness. Not running away when the conditions do not live up to the stories we’ve been trained to expect.

I can see the limitations of the constructs we’ve created around love, and how those constructs quietly limit the possibilities of life. Love becomes a narrow hallway when it was always meant to be a wide landscape.

And that’s what’s been on my mind: what would it look like to live as if love really is the operating system, even when life is complicated?

The movie opens and closes at an airport, where love is visible and unguarded, because people are arriving and leaving, and the heart does not bother pretending. We all recognize that kind of love. Most of us can access it.

The question I want to explore is simple, and not easy:

How do we expand that airport circle of love to our neighbors, and to people we don’t even know?

Hidden underpinnings of community

Some people treat Love Actually like a fluffy collection of romantic storylines.

I think it’s doing something bigger.

Yes, there’s romance. But the deeper pattern is proximity and overlap. The characters are connected in ways that are hard to follow at first, and that’s the point. We see crossovers at the wedding, at the funeral, on the movie set, in the office, at school, in neighborhoods, in rehearsals for the Christmas play.

It’s not random. It’s a portrait of how community actually works. Overlapping circles. Hidden threads. Shared environments where people keep bumping into each other, and love keeps having a chance to happen.

One of my simplest beliefs is this:

Without proximity, closeness is harder.

And proximity matters even more now because modern life is packed. Work, family, schedules, the endless logistics. Even taking a call or responding to a text takes energy we genuinely do not have. So when someone we love reaches out to share joy, grief, or a problem, we may not have the space to show up the way we want. Not because we don’t care, but because our lives are over scheduled and under connected.

That’s why proximity is structural. Shared space lowers the friction. It creates natural moments to notice each other, to help each other, to be interrupted in the best way.

And we’ve all felt the flip side.

You leave a job where you invested most of your life with people you genuinely connected to, people who felt like a real community. Then poof. The job ends, the proximity ends, and the connections fade. Not because the care was not real, but because the shared structure that held the relationship in place disappeared.

Which leads to a line that feels almost obvious once you see it:

Structure creates proximity. Proximity creates the conditions for closeness. Therefore structure creates the conditions for love to actually happen.

When life gets heavy, love needs scaffolding

The film shows how connected we are when things are light.

Real life tests those connections when things are heavy.

One storyline that always lands for me is the widower who lost his wife to cancer. He’s trying to be strong for his son, but he admits something quietly devastating. He doesn’t really have anyone to talk to. So he reaches for the person who feels safe. Someone close enough to hold the truth without trying to fix it.

That hit home.

It reminded me of a conversation with Sue-Anne about how hard her grief has been since losing Tom. She asked me, “Why does it have to be so hard?”

And what came out of my mouth surprised even me: because we’re not in true community.

In old farm villages, when the community lost their beloved bread maker, everyone felt it. Everyone showed up. They grieved together. The sorrow was still real, but it wasn’t as lonely, and it didn’t have to be carried by one person’s nervous system.

It’s like using the scale of community and interdependent connection to weather the blow.

And maybe that’s one of the hidden messages in this film: love isn’t just a feeling. It’s a network. It’s what makes the unbearable bearable.

Love does not survive on intention alone. It needs structure. Interdependence. Ways we actually show up for each other when life gets hard. You cannot just pray community into existence. You have to build it.

How AMP actually changes you

One of the most important things about AMP sessions is this: the real insights often arrive after the session has had time to integrate. Sometimes it takes weeks. Sometimes years. That’s not a flaw. It’s the design.

So it’s not like you watch a movie, read a few statements, and suddenly you’re healed.

What happens is quieter and more real.

You start choosing differently because you can see more. You become less insular, not by magic, but by practice. Life is like learning to ride a bike. You wobble, you fall, you get back on. Over time you find your center faster and faster.

This work creates a different set point of focus. You still lose balance sometimes. You still fall sometimes. But you get back quicker each time. Not because you ascended into perfection, but because you trained a new reflex.

That’s why I return to this Love Actually session each year. It recalibrates me. It widens the hallway into that wide landscape again.

A small experiment: watch it as a love scavenger hunt

If you want to try this, here’s the experiment.

Do not watch Love Actually as a romance movie.

Watch it as a love scavenger hunt.

Look for love as care. Love as devotion. Love as repair. Love as truth. Love as letting go. Love as courage. Love as grief that still shows up.

Not all love in this film is clean. Not all of it is wise. That’s part of what makes it useful. It helps you separate love itself from the stories, the strategies, and the messy human ways we try to reach for it.

And see if you can discover something simple and revolutionary: the love operating system is all around. It’s not always dignified or newsworthy. But it’s there, running quietly underneath the noise.

If you feel yourself narrowing into Us vs Them anywhere in your life, this is a gentle counter practice: widen the circle again. Start with what’s close. Then let it ripple outward.

Step One: The Intention Session

If you’d like to experience the resonance of this Love Actually AMP session, begin with this simple Intention Session. It helps align your body, mind, and emotions so you receive the full benefit of the work.

You only need to do this once before you watch the film. If you’ve already completed an Intention Session, it carries over for all of the AMP movies I talk about, so you do not need to repeat it.

Speak these aloud:

• I allow the changes in my timing and only integrate what I am ready to.

• I have faith that I will receive the benefits I desire.

• I am patient with myself as I make my changes.

• I let go of feeling I am too busy to take the time for this.

• I let go of needing to understand how AMP works and allow myself to receive the full benefits in my own timing.

Engage three simple modalities:

• Nod your head yes.

• Drink some water.

• Take several slow, rhythmic breaths through your nose.

Then simply watch Love Actually all the way through. Do not force insights. Just notice what stirs. Notice where you feel close and where you want to pull away. Notice who feels like us and who still feels like them.

Let Go and Allow statements (from the AMP session)

Let Go

• I let go of comparing myself to other people and judging them as “real.”

• I stop judging myself and stop wondering if I’m doing it right.

• I let go of overthinking, because too much thinking ruins love.

• I let go of the old stories about what love is “supposed” to look like.

• I let go of needing love to be dramatic in order to be real.

Allow

• I allow love to be the operating system of my life, with many beautiful aspects.

• I allow myself to emulate what is good and loving.

• I allow myself to love no matter what others do, and still look at them with loving eyes.

• I allow love to pour in.

• I allow myself to remember how loved I am, and to feel love from people, animals, and nature.

A quiet teacher inside the film

One of the quiet teachers inside Love Actually is Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” The film uses her later recording at the exact moment when love stops being a story and becomes a lived reality.

There’s a line in that song that keeps getting truer for me as I get older:

“I’ve looked at love from both sides now.”

And the more I think I know love, the more I realize how much I still have to learn.

That’s why I keep coming back to this AMP session. Not because it makes love simple. Because it makes love real. Ordinary. Sometimes messy. Not always dignified or newsworthy. But there, waiting to be practiced.

I’m still trying.

Because love is not only something we feel.
Love is something we build.
And if you look for it, you might find that love actually is all around.

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This post is rooted in the original research and the belief statements and intentions I developed through our Alignment Movie Process (AMP). I collaborated with ChatGPT to help shape these ideas into a clear, everyday voice so they can be more easily shared and experienced. The resonance and insights are the heart of our work; the words here are one way to carry them into the world.