Intro:
The New Year had me thinking a lot about goals, values, ambitions, motivations, life, and how excited I was to wear my new fuzzy socks. With all the talk of “look how far you’ve come in a year” and “can you believe that was only 1 year ago” I found myself even more reflective and nearly bubbling over with blog ideas – two of which involved writing about goals and values.
At my old job, we had a list of working norms – kind of like guiding values – and each day at our morning huddle, we would say what working norm we were focusing on that day. I loved that idea. I mean, obviously, in theory, you were living into every positive attribute every day you walked into the office, but how nice it was to really put your heart and soul behind one guiding value each week.
For this reason, I’ve decided to dedicate a new series of “Res” posts to my own kind of working norms – my own mini-resolutions. You don’t have to buy into any of these. You don’t have to make your own. But maybe at some point, it’ll make you think about what it would look like to radically change your life one week at a time.
Res 10: Say I Love You
I think the first time a boy tried to tell me he loved me, I snapped into one of my monologues about how I think there are many different ways to look at love and I was going to need him to clarify if it was in that “you’re my best friend and I’d do anything for you” kind of way or if it was more like the “I love you love you” kind of deal.
I haven’t always been this smooth.
But I have always had a lot of really opinionated thoughts on the semantics of language. For example, just this past week, I had a hearty discussion with a friend about the word smart.
“You know I don’t believe in smart. I think ‘smart’ needs to be broken down further. I’m not any ‘smarter’ than anyone else just because I got good grades in high school. I just tried really, really hard and I did my work. And see, it can be so much more than that. Because ‘smart’ really is made up of a bunch of components. You have ‘common sense,’ ‘classic intelligence,’ ‘street smarts’ – which I’d argue is similar to common sense, and ‘wisdom.’ So let’s start with common sense…”
Really, I mean, it’s pretty clear that with conversations like the above, I am quite the catch.
Regardless, I’ve never been too careful about the use of love. I’m the friend that tells all the other friends “love you, bye” before hanging up the phone.
Once in high school, someone tried to tell me that I was diluting the word. That my saying “love you” as I skipped away to third period, was taking away the weight of the statement – that someday, when I say “I do” and tell my future husband that I love him, it won’t mean as much.
I heard them out and may have even bought into the idea for a couple days. But then I had to respectfully disagree.
While I understand their angle, I did truly view love in different ways. I love my friends more than anything in this world – something I remind them of nearly always.
But I have also fallen in deep love-love. And though the “I love you” sentence is identical in both situations, there is a certain shift I can feel in my eyes when I say it to the person I love-love. And the sentiment becomes entirely different.
Resolution #10: Say I Love You
My point is don’t buy into the hype of over-using “I love you.” Don’t think that you can ever say it too much or that someone could possibly get tired of hearing it. At the same time, recognize its weight – even if you are just saying “I love you; you’re my best friend and I’d do anything for you” kind of way. Because even in that, you are promising a bit of yourself to someone who means a great deal to you.
And when it comes to love-love? You’ll feel the difference.
Don’t be afraid to love someone today. Don’t be afraid to love-love someone tomorrow. And don’t be afraid if it turns out that the person you loved yesterday became the person you love-love today.
After all, I’d imagine the one thing we can never get enough of in this world is love. So shower those you hold near in appreciation and never hang up the phone without letting the other person know how you feel.
Love always,
Liz
