L-o-v-e. How can one word that is so powerful, mean so many different things? One could say they love their spouse, their mistress, their best friend, their dog, or their car, and in every scenario, love takes on a different meaning and actually makes it impossible to love all of those things. The complete opposite is said for hate.
Hate is such an extreme emotion, it makes you question if we ever truly feel hate at all. Why is this? How is it that one term, which we use to describe the most important things in our lives, takes on so many meanings? Maybe it’s just another word we made up. It doesn’t exist; it is not a feeling; it is simply a four-letter word.
Have you ever seen or heard any of your friends or family say they love this person or that person with all their heart and they don’t know what they’d do without them? Fast forward six months and they suddenly hate that person and want nothing to do with them. Then six months later, they find another person who they love and they can’t live without.
Yeah, we have all seen this happen at some point. People hold the term ‘love’ to such high standards that it has become meaningless. If you want to describe the feeling where you feel like you can’t live without a person, or you just have a euphoric feeling whenever you’re with them, then describe it, but it’s not called love.
The other day I left my phone in a movie theatre, and when I went back to ask the woman who cleans the floor after the movie if she had it, she did. She handed it back to me, and I said, “I love you.” I will guarantee you that at that moment in time, I loved her just as much, if not more, than you love your romantic partner. Not because we have some sort of ever lasting bond, but because she was showing unselfish, loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another, which is one of the many definitions of love. The woman could have just kept my phone and sold it for a couple hundred dollars.
Count how many times a day you say love: “I love this song. I love this weather. I love your shoes. I love going to the beach. I love summer. I love this burrito.” Then you go home and kiss your significant other and say, “I love you” before bed. In reality, that is no different than sleeping with ten different people throughout the day, and then going home and letting your significant other have it last. Ok, maybe that is a stretch, but you understand what I am getting at.
Everybody remembers the first time they said they loved someone else. 99 percent of the time, when someone says they love you, it either makes you smile or freaks you out. There is no in-between feeling like, “Oh that was kind.” The first time I told someone I loved her was in high school, after I finally got to sleep with a girl I chased for the majority of my junior year. After it happened I said, “I love you,” not because I meant I wanted to date her, but because I couldn’t really tap her on the ass and say, “Thanks.” I thought I was being nice and caring, and I did genuinely love and appreciate her for sleeping with me. The next thing I knew, everything was weird between us.
The worst is when love is used as a cop out or an excuse. Typically, this occurs when someone in a relationship cheats on his or her partner. The first thing that comes out of the cheater’s mouth, trying to make the situation right, is, “But baby, I love you. I don’t love her.” Oh, well since that’s the case, then we can just forget it all ever happened and move on with our lives, right? I mean the scary part is that it actually makes sense. There are so many different ways to express love and to simply use the term that you might actually be able to love someone in the caring and enamoring sense, but also love sticking your d*ck in someone else at the same time.
My point is that saying “I love you” means nothing. I am not saying it used to mean anything, either. I think it was bullshit from the start. If you genuinely love someone, there are ways to prove it outside of saying it. I think the world would be a better place if we didn’t use the word at all, strictly because it would make people have to prove what they’re actually feeling, rather than simply saying it.
Stop being lazy and use your vocabulary to describe the way you’re truly feeling. Get off your ass, and be creative to figure out a way to prove you genuinely care for someone. Not everything has to be “I love this,” or “I love that.” Granted, we live in a society based on an extreme emotion spectrum, from love to hate. At some point, we’re all going to realize that we’ve probably never really experienced much feeling of love, or hate, if any at all.
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