My countless stays in the USA inspire me to meditate about these three words. What do they mean? What emotions do they create in the person these words are told to? How easy can I say them?
„I love you“, says the mother to her child before she goes to school, the husband to his wife, before he goes to work in the morning. It is almost used as a „byebye, see you later“. However, also lovers whisper these words into each others ears. But also a girlfriend told me lately, „I love you“. And recently a male friend called me on the phone to say, „Just wanted to tell you: I love you“.
Well, coming from a german speaking country, we use these words a lot scarcer than in the US.
No doubt, it is certainly nice to hear, „I love you“. However, in all cases, these words have left me rather insecure und confused. I did not know how to put them. These, for me almost holy words, are thrown around over in the States and I have no clue how to grasp their meaning. Have they degenerated to a meaningless phrase? These three words once I had reserved for THE only man in my life? But I have long been divorced from this man and the „I love you“ I tried to save up for my next partner. And when he came and I told him, „I love you“, would the Love maybe have become secondhand?
Did I ever tell these words to my kids? I think only in maybe a weaker version like „I like you“. But then, in the Swiss dialect of course, it is another story again, and the „I love you“ can be brought over in many different ways.
However, this is little help when it comes to the English terminology. In the course of thinking about the three mystical words I realized, I had to go beyond and open up the notion of the meaning „love“. So there is love for my children, love to a partner, love to my girlfriends, to my parents, to a lover, to myself, to god, to natur, to life itself.
Love seems to be such an all embracing expression. It can be applied for anything. And how I once myself have experienced in a meditation to melt and merge with love, I know that ultimately all is love. We all are an expression of love. So, when I say to someone „I love you“, I actually say it to every- and anybody that exists at the same time. This is probably the hidden, inner meaning.
The outer meaning, on the level of our everyday life however, it is most likely a cultural question, a question of custom or habit, how the words „I love you“ are used. But how I interpret them is left up to me.
Nevertheless, I have learned to say them more often and more easely. But more and more I really feel the deep meaning behind it, this hidden meaning of an all encompassing feeling and I can say from the deepest core of my heart: I LOVE YOU, YES I DO, OH YES I DO! You might wonder, but who is the YOU? It is indeed YOU, the reader of these words. Whoever wants to receive this LOVE is actually meant, it is life itself and all it’s living content!