The Highest Form of Love, for Me, Is Consideration
I didn’t quite realise how much I believed this until Sunday.
I was at a bridal shower, surrounded by a group of young women who were simply being thoughtful. Nothing dramatic. No grand gestures. No performance of kindness. They just noticed people. They remembered to include everyone in photographs. They made sure no one was standing awkwardly on the sidelines. They were warm and respectful and, most importantly, considerate.
And watching them do these very ordinary things brought me face-to-face with something I hadn’t thought about in a long time. Why I stopped baking. It seems like a strange connection, doesn’t it? But as I sat there, being included and cared for in these small, almost imperceptible ways, I suddenly remembered what it had felt like to experience the opposite. And I remembered the cakes.
There was a time when baking was a huge part of my life. I was a professional baker. Making cakes wasn’t something I did for fun, or something I offered to friends when I happened to have the time. It was my craft. Something I was good at. And when I made a cake for someone, there was always a little bit of me in it.
Years ago, I made a cake for a baby shower. As happens at these things, everyone gathered around the cake for photographs. One family took a picture. Then another. Then another. And I waited. Eventually, it was our turn to have a photograph with the mother and the cake I had made. And just as we were about to take it, someone decided the cake needed to be cut. Right then. So the cake was cut and portioned out by me, because apparently I was the expert at that job too. And afterwards, we took the family photograph anyway, with a rather demolished cake sitting in front of us.
It was only a photograph. A few seconds. Nothing that should have mattered. Except I remember crying in the car on the way home. I wasn’t crying because I didn’t get a nice photograph. I was crying because, in that moment, I felt completely unconsidered. Everyone else had been remembered. Everyone else had been given their moment. And when it came to me, the person who had actually made the cake, it somehow wasn’t important enough to wait.I didn’t have the words for that at the time. I just knew I was hurt. And there had been other moments.
Once, I was cutting my birthday cake when the women around me suddenly decided to step away and take selfies, leaving me standing there in the middle of my own celebration. It was another tiny moment. The sort of thing you tell yourself shouldn’t matter. The sort of thing you don’t want to be the person who complains about. But these are the things that stay with us.
Because when you have been a professional baker, you know that a cake is never just a cake. There are ingredients, yes. But there are also hours of planning, shopping, preparation, baking, decorating and cleaning. There is thought, care and time. A cake can be a very tangible way of saying, I did this for you. And when that effort is repeatedly treated as though it costs you nothing, something inside you begins to change.
Eventually, I stopped professional baking. Not because I stopped loving it. Because I stopped loving what it had come to represent. Something that had once brought me enormous joy began to feel like something people expected from me rather than something they valued.
I don’t want to turn this into one of those stories about how wonderful young people are today and how our generation somehow got it wrong. That isn’t true. There are thoughtful women in every generation, and there are thoughtless ones too. Perhaps these women were simply a particularly lovely group. Perhaps younger women do have a different language around boundaries, emotional wellbeing and inclusion. Perhaps they have grown up understanding something that takes some of us longer to learn.
Or perhaps I was simply lucky enough to spend Sunday in the company of people who were naturally considerate. Whatever the reason, I noticed it. And it moved me. Because there was something unexpectedly healing about watching consideration happen so naturally. No one was trying to make anyone feel special. They were simply making sure nobody felt forgotten. And that distinction stayed with me. The cakes were never really the problem. It was everything that surrounded them.
The moments when someone could have thought, She should be in this picture too, but didn’t. The moments when everyone else’s presence seemed to matter, while yours somehow became invisible. They were small moments. But perhaps the small things aren’t really small at all.
We often think of love as something enormous. Sacrifice. Grand gestures. But I think love often reveals itself in much smaller ways. It is remembering to take the photograph. It is noticing who hasn’t been included. It is saying thank you. It is not only thinking of someone when you need something from them. It is noticing the person who is quietly doing the work behind the scenes. It is making someone feel that their presence matters.
On Sunday, I watched a group of young women do all of this without making a big deal of it. They were just being kind, thoughtful and considerate. And somehow, that ordinary kindness opened a door into a part of my own life that I had shut away. I suddenly understood that stopping professional baking had never really been about the baking. It was about what baking had come to represent. And perhaps that is why the realisation felt less like sadness and more like relief.
For years, I had thought I stopped because I was hurt. Now I think I understand what the hurt was trying to tell me. I didn’t need applause. I didn’t need people to make a fuss. I didn’t need grand gratitude. I just wanted someone to think of me, too. Someone to notice that I was there. Perhaps that is what consideration really is. Not making someone feel important with a grand gesture. Simply remembering that they matter while you are busy thinking about everything else.
And perhaps there is something hopeful in finally understanding that. Because if thoughtlessness could make me put something I loved away, perhaps consideration can help me find my way back to it. Maybe one day I will bake professionally again. And if I do, I think I will understand something I didn’t understand before. The cake was never just a cake. It was always a way of saying:
I thought of you.
I made this for you.
I wanted to give you something beautiful.
And perhaps, next time, I will remember to save a little piece of that beauty for myself, too. Because the highest form of love, for me, is consideration. Not because it is grand. But because, in all the smallest ways, it says:
I thought of you.
I wanted you here.
I see you.
You matter.
