“I Love You”

What are we? What are we as students, teachers, searchers, dwellers, watchers, lovers, humans, people? What are we as living beings, doing with our precious lives?

“I love you.”

Those words are supposed to be meaningful. They are supposed to be special. The word “love” is supposed to be an action word, a verb. What have people made it now? It’s not supposed to be lust. And it’s not only affection, in fact affection is only a small part of it. Love is caring for someone, being there for them no matter what happens, causing no harm, heals wounds, and tries to prevent pain and suffering. But above all it never ever stops. It’s unconditional. It’s not fictional, it’s real. People say all the time, “ Oh I don’t love him/her anymore.” Well that’s obviously not true because you can’t just “drift apart” or stop loving someone, once you start you can never stop because that is what love is. Just because you are attracted to someone does not mean that you love them, and just because someone does little romantic gestures here and there doesn’t not mean that they love you.

When they put you before themselves; when they put in the effort to interact with you each day, especially if it’s just to sit down and talk. Putting in the effort to know you and remember even the littlest things; relieving your stress not adding on to it and reminding you to calm down and take deep breaths once in a while is love.

If someone was rich and bought me a room full of flowers and chocolates, I wouldn’t feel as loved as I would if someone who was broke bought me a single dried up rose because that was all he could afford and he wanted to spend the last of it on me. I would cherish it forever. I’m not saying you have to be rich or poor, if you just made me something that you put a lot of time and effort into or gave me something that is precious maybe only to you then I would cherish it just as much.

People now days have forgotten the meaning of love and what love does. They just don’t know what it is anymore. They get it confused with lust and attraction. Even teens want in on it, they always have; and they have only gotten worse. I mean, they throw the word “love” around like it’s nothing. They also think that they need someone else to supposedly “love” them to make them feel happy, whole, and complete; hell I even thought I needed it too for a period of time. But I stepped back and looked at the bigger picture and thought of some scenarios of situations that I would have with what other people say is the person that I “love” and I realized “no, I don’t need that now. I need to learn to depend on myself and not rely on anyone else and if I meet someone along the way then good for me but I’m still going to keep my goals and look towards the future and whoever I am with is going to help me get there, kind of like a boost.”

The point is that us, teenagers are looking too close at a humongous picture, I’m talking about microscopically close. They, we need a wake up call—heck everyone needs a wake up call or reminder to step back and look at the bigger picture, preferably before they blurt out the words “I love you.”