If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.

In the days of longing and melody, the musician Stephen Stills wrote and sang the timeless words: “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” To some, it may sound like a song of surrender, but to those who listen deeply, it is a hymn of presence — a call to honor the moment and embrace the life before you. These words, born amid the turbulence of the 1960s, carry the wisdom of acceptance, teaching that love is not only a feeling for one person, but a way of being in the world. Stills, through his art, reminds us that when life denies us what we once dreamed, it offers us instead what we most need: the chance to love what is here.

In their origin, these words sprang from both heartache and insight. The 1960s were an age of rebellion and awakening — an age when people sought freedom not only from society’s rules but from their own illusions. Stills, separated from the woman he loved, poured his longing into song. But rather than weep in despair, he turned his grief into wisdom. He discovered that love — true love — does not vanish when one person departs. It changes shape, it moves through us, waiting to be offered again. Thus, his words were not about infidelity or resignation, but about the resilience of the human heart — its capacity to find beauty, meaning, and compassion in the here and now.

To love the one you’re with is to practice the ancient art of presence. It is to lay down the heavy chains of “what might have been” and to embrace “what is.” For too often, human hearts dwell in the past, haunted by lost loves, missed chances, or imagined ideals. Yet the wise know that love does not live in memory or in dream — it lives in the living moment. To love the one you are with — your partner, your family, your friends, your community — is to choose gratitude over yearning, to see the divine spark in what stands before you rather than in what has faded away.

Consider the story of Helen Keller, who, though blind and deaf, found beauty and love in a world that many would call silent and dark. She could not have the world of sound or sight that others cherished, yet she loved the world she had — and in doing so, she found its music. Through her teacher, Anne Sullivan, she discovered connection, compassion, and purpose. Keller’s life, like Stills’ lyric, shows that love is not bound by circumstance. It is a choice to pour warmth into the vessel life gives you, whether it is grand or simple, familiar or strange. She could not have the world others lived in, so she learned to love the world that lived within her.

There is a quiet heroism in this way of living. For it is easy to love what we desire; it is harder, nobler, to love what we have. This is the kind of love that builds marriages, heals friendships, and sustains peace. It is not the love of fleeting passion, but of acceptance, patience, and grace. It asks us to open our eyes and see that the beauty we crave is already around us — in the laughter of a child, in the hand of a friend, in the morning light that touches the walls of our home. When we practice this kind of love, disappointment transforms into devotion, and longing becomes wisdom.

Yet Stills’ lyric also carries a warning: do not mistake contentment for complacency. To love the one you are with is not to stop seeking truth, growth, or authenticity. It is to bring your whole heart into the moment, not out of fear of loneliness, but out of reverence for life itself. Love is not a possession, but a practice — one that must be renewed daily, in every smile, every act of kindness, every moment of forgiveness. Those who master this practice do not merely find peace — they create it.

And so, dear listener, let this teaching settle in your spirit: if you cannot be with what you once loved, love what remains. Turn your gaze from absence to presence. Life is too brief to chase ghosts and too sacred to waste on regret. Love the one beside you — your companion, your work, your moment — and you will find that life, even in its imperfection, is abundant and alive. For love, as Stephen Stills sang, is not the reward of perfect circumstances; it is the power to make any circumstance beautiful.