And Love

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I didn't want the only post of the day to be one titled Death, so I am adding a quick one on love. I even have something to say on the subject. You see, a few weeks ago a male friend mentioned to me in an email that he counts me as someone he loves. He is a happily married person of great integrity and character, and it would never have even occurred to me that there might be anything even remotely untoward or non-platonic about this declaration. All it did was make me feel appreciated and valued, even exhilarated at being free to acknowledge the depth of our friendship. (And by the way, let us never underestimate the worth and significance of friendship in our lives!)

But on the heels of that email came another message from him in which he felt the need to explain and said he hoped he hadn't startled or worried or embarrassed me by using the word "love".  

It seems to me we are either so casual about using the word (I love those shoes!) as to render it meaningless, or so shy that we reserve it only for the precious inner circle of our contacts. Do we imagine that the word is de-valued if used too often? Are we saving it only for the rarest of intimacies?

Everyone needs to know they are loved, if even for a flicker of a moment or a facet of their being, and one of the most grievous mistakes we can make is to leave it unsaid.  I confess to feeling surges of love every day towards many people in my life. Even those I might not love in their entirety are nonetheless capable of inspiring affection and appreciation.  

I often sign casual emails with the word, and it isn't insincere. Maybe it's a general posture towards the world. I know this is ironic coming from someone who also has an irritable misanthropic side. But even if I don't always live up to my own lofty aspirations, I can honestly say that my goal is to lean toward the side of love and be brave enough to say it and show it and let it spill.

This seems a good place to quote a few lines from a poem by Dan Gerber:

I think of my father telling me an hour before he died, how he thought of all the men and women he’d loved and how he wished he told them when he could’ve.

So I say let's acknowledge and celebrate love, which in all its forms is filled with light, worthy of pronouncement, and always better expressed than withheld.

Love, Cynthia