Talking, Dates, and Gifts Are All But Rituals of Love

Let me pose a question: is the ability to ask questions considered a skill? And if so, does true skill lie in asking the right ones?

It wasn’t until I reach my post-grad studies that I realized that the true test of learning is not always in what you can remember or memorize, but in the questions you are able to ask about it.

In school, our teachers would unfailingly ask at the end of each lesson, “Do you have any questions?” Yet, like most students, we would almost always answer, “None.” Guided more by convenience than curiosity, it was likely due to our eagerness for recess or simply the desire to finally gain our freedom. Looking back, it becomes clear that this simple ritual, so often dismissed, was more than just a perfunctory check but more of a lesson in the art of inquiry and learning.

In one of my Master’s classes, during journal club discussions, we were tasked with evaluating the day’s reporter. On our rating sheets, we also had to write down two (2) “thought-provoking questions” from the report we had just discussed. On the surface, asking a question should have been easy. A walk in the park. Yet more often than not, I found myself among the last to leave the room, struggling to write even a single question! Don’t get me wrong: I could confidently say that I understood the discussion and grasped its main points. But when pressed to distill that understanding into a thoughtful question, I realized how little I had truly reflected on the material. At the time, I hadn’t even recognized that asking thoughtful, intentional questions was a skill I also needed to hone. It was humbling and I’m still working on it. A stark reminder that comprehension and curiosity are not the same, and that true learning often begins with the questions we dare to ask.

Perhaps the same is true of love.

Do you ask your love ones questions? Do you ask the right ones? More importantly, are you genuinely curious?

I want to offer a simple thesis: curiosity is the basic unit of love from which all expressions of love are formed.

Let's try to dissect it. At its most fundamental level, love is structured around a single core: curiosity, from which all the love languages emanate. Curiosity is seen in noticing the needs and responding with care (acts of service); in discovering what brings meaning or value to something (gifts); in attuning to and responding to another’s physical or emotional state (physical touch); in exploring shared experiences (quality time); and in carefully choosing words that convey care and warmth (words of affirmation). And so, seen this way, talking, dates, and gifts are not the substance of love itself, but the rituals through which curiosity is expressed and made tangible.

To be curious, from this perspective, is to desire to truly see someone and understand their inner world. It's like assembling a mosaic of who they are from the fragments they offer. At its core, curiosity is not merely an impulse to know, but a hallmark of attentiveness; an active pull toward the unknown, a conscious desire to notice and engage, to treat something with enough care to seek understanding and ask thoughtful questions. That’s where true intimacy thrives. Curiosity is intimacy. Without it, surface questions are just collected facts, like reading a wiki page on your favorite pop star. That is why knowing is a form of loving, and to be known is to be truly loved.

Truly knowing someone is a profound act of helping them be seen—to attend, with generosity, to the microcosm they carry within themselves. I didn’t realize how much I needed someone to ask why I felt, thought, or liked something until someone finally did. That experience reshaped how I relate to others. Now, that is exactly what I strive to do in my relationships (even in my work). I want to understand their perspectives, learn from them, but, more importantly, make space for them to be the versions of themselves they love and let it be received.

As budding scientists, we are being trained to be unrelentingly curious. But that same insight carries over into love. Knowing facts about someone is easy, but intimacy begins with the willingness to ask, to truly listen, and to be shaped by what is revealed. Just as science deepens through inquiry, love grows through the questions we dare to ask and the care with which we receive the answers.

As a final note, here’s a thoughtful linguistic trivia to leave you with: the root word for curiosity comes from the Latin cura, meaning care. And how amazing it is to realize that?

Stay curious.

(Q.C., 02/2026)