When I was 17, I fell madly in love. We'd been casual friends, but on May 5, 1979, while we were hanging around a campfire with some other high school seniors, she slipped her hand into mine. That was my first taste of pure bliss. I treasured being a camp counselor, but that summer I stayed home from camp and worked as a janitor in a movie theater so I could go to the Howard Johnson's lunch counter every day and chat with her while she worked.

We were separated for a year at different colleges, then she transferred to join me at the University of Chicago, where, within a few months, she dumped me. My ensuing agony was laced with a young man's vanity. I was suffering but proud of myself for being capable of suffering that much. I remember going to the mall in Water Tower Place and buying some French cigarettes so I could suffer like Albert Camus.

I was transformed by time in college classrooms, but that love affair might still have been the most important educational experience of my youth. It taught me that there are emotions more joyous and more painful than I ever knew existed. It taught me what it's like when the self gets decentered and things most precious to you are in another. I even learned a few things about the complex art of being close to another.

Love is a motivational state. It could be love for a person, a place, a craft, an idea or the divine, but something outside the self touches something deep inside the self and sets off a nuclear reaction. You want to learn everything you can about the thing you love. (They say love is blind, but love is the opposite of blind.) Your love is propelling you this way or that. You want communion with what you love.

I've composed this homage to love because Americans seem to be having less of it. Think of the things people most commonly love--their spouse, kids, friends, God, nation and community. Now look at social trends. Marriage rates hover near record lows, and the share of 40-year-olds who have never been married is at record highs. (Cohabitation rates are up, but that doesn't come close to making up for the decline in marriage.)

Americans are having fewer kids. Americans have fewer friends than before and spend less time with the friends they have. Church and synagogue attendance rates have been falling for decades. The share of Americans who said they feel patriotic about their country is down, especially among the young. From 1985 to 1994, active involvement in community organizations fell by about half, and there is no sign of a recovery.

In 2023 a Wall Street Journal/NORC survey asked people about what values were "very important" to them. Since 1998, the shares of Americans who said they highly valued patriotism, religion, having children and community involvement have all........

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