Love is where our strength and our fragility meet. It drives Innocent to his best and, in the same motion, leaves him exposed. “Love reminds us that we are strong and weak, and hopelessly dependent, even in our self-sufficiency. It reminds us that we are human.”

It also asks for sacrifice. The people and things he loves don’t always sit in harmony; loving them means sometimes setting his own well-being aside for theirs, or holding competing loves in tension.

That’s the double edge. Caring about anything brings meaning and confusion at once — you treasure it and fear losing it in the same breath. To love is simply to be human: never as self-sufficient as we like to think.