We all say it. Sometimes we feel it; sometimes, we don’t. Yet, many don’t understand what “I love you” truly means.
In a time when love abounds, and people are rolling around and wanting more and more of it, I’d like to ask you:
Are you sure you want the experience of loving someone and being loved in return?
I ask you because what most of us call ‘love,’ more often than not, is not real love. It may look, feel, or act like it, yet it is far from the love your heart craves the most.
Love is not neediness, desire, infatuation, obsession, or lust. Love is appreciation, gratitude, warmth, tingles, trust, connection, nurturing, awe, softness, tenderness, joy, contentment, and safety, to name a few.
Love is real, pure, and true.
Of all the Western languages, English is by far the poorest when describing the richest, most profound, multi-dimensional force that drives our human lives.
In Sanskrit, there are 96 words used to describe different kinds of love. Ancient Persian has 80, Greek has three, yet English only has one.
“I love my friend and would do anything for him.”
“I love my life, nature, and God.”
“I love chocolate, pancakes, and hammocks.”
“I love the sound of the rain at night.”
These are all different expressions of love. Yet most of us miss out on the fundamental fact that each time you say “I love you,” you start with I.
What if “I love you” means “I love how I feel when I’m with you”?
Wouldn’t that make love an inside job?
And if love is an inside job, what if it was also a choice? A choice as in, “I love you because I choose to love you,” or “because I want to love you,” or as Pablo Neruda would say, “because I know no other way.”
What if today you choose to love yourself?
What if today you choose to accept yourself as you are and where you are and stop seeing yourself as imperfect, broken, or wrong?
What if today you face the mirror and say to yourself, “I love you, I care about you, and I will do my best to keep loving you throughout the day… through this difficult situation…. through this transition“?
What if today you could choose to open to the possibility that the greatest love there is, is the one you feel when you fully connect to the essential part of you that lives deep within your heart?
And that each time you share this love with others, it comes back to you because your heart is the source of that love.
From my heart to yours,
