How deep is your love? (The Bee Gees still want to know.)
Love is a confounding word – widely used, but with slim agreement on its appropriate…
- meaning (What kind of love are you talking about here, Ora?)
- context (Should every phone call end with a profession of love?)
- degree (If you really loved me, you would…)
- frequency (Did your parents say they loved you enough?)
- sincerity (Do you really mean it?)
- subject (Can you love your dog as much as you love your bff?)
- depth (Do you love me as much as I love you?)
With the relentless use of ❤️ emojis in text messages to communicate, agree, and quickly “respond” (along with the burst of floating red hearts you can now generate with your fingers on zoom – so fun!), love is definitely in the air, or should I say…in the cyberspace.
So, it’s time to move into a confessional about my own love, with the risk of disappointing a few peeps.
Here goes: I love only a few people.
I mean I deeply love only a few. I can count them on one hand. And by love, here I mean the kind of love that actually no words can describe. It’s a love that sits viscerally in the deep center of my soul. It’s a love that when I think about it, I well up instantly. It’s a love that would leave me unmoored and shattered, if its subjects were gone.
So that you don’t think I’m a misanthrope, I definitely have many other varieties and shades of love, too. I have versions of love for friends, clients, relatives, colleagues, mentors, and the groups of previously incarcerated I facilitate. I even have a version of love for all humanity. (Additional confession: I have yet to love an animal.)
But, I like to reserve the 3-word proclamation I LOVE YOU for only those precious few.
For those of you who are into Chapman’s 5 Languages of Love, you might be interested to know that, indeed, words ARE my primary language of love! But those 3 words, when combined, are sacred for me.
That does put me in a predicament. Members of my plant medicine community – precious humans with beautiful souls who heal themselves and serve others, making the world a better, safer place – use the 3-word proclamation of love a lot. I mean A LOT. 🙄 I’ll argue on their behalf, that they do feel it and express it authentically.
Even my plant medicine ceremony facilitator this past weekend whispered I LOVE YOU to me, as she assisted. Note that I met her in person for the first time just the day before.
Do you really? I think. Can you possibly love me without fully knowing me? I feel guilty that I can’t fully reciprocate. And totally awkward in this kind of moment. (For the record: Yes, I admire and appreciate you deeply. But the words you might need as the response to your call are stuck, not in my heart, but in my throat.)
So to my precious connections who shower me with the 3-word proclamation of love, please don’t stop. You do you. I’ll do me. I’ll do me with an abundance of loves (plural intended) – each with a unique nuance, and each with a different combination of words.
Sending you love on this Valentine’s Day. 🥰
