The Lincoln Log

Photo by Dana Lui

It’s a popular saying; most hear it often, maybe even everyday. It’s those three words, “I love you.” But what really puzzles me is the word between the I and you, the word love. Now I’ve been thinking for some time, but it hasn’t hit me yet what love really is. Many say love is a feeling, the one that fills your heart with great energy it feels like a hammer pounding away on your insides. Others say it’s a desire, or a wanting that keeps you tiptoeing around. Some say love is a haunting spirit, you know it’s lingering around, but there’s nothing you can do about it.

It seems as though everyone has their own definition of love. So who would I be to tell you what it is? But it seems to me that love is indefinable. Love is a word is indescribable because it is a word with such power and meaning that none word in the English language even compares. Love can send a thousand signs, signals, messages, feelings or whatever to someone without needing any further explanation.

But with a word as valuable and precious as love, why would people even dream of using it with such irresponsibility and insignificance? Nowadays, it’s as people are blinded to what the saying represents. What gets me is that high school students and even adults are spitting out the word without even understanding the power of love. Many times I hear random teenagers repeating the word love over and over again at our very own school.

When you use a word that was meant to have such signification so loosely to every boy or girl you date, how can you experience the true feelings for “the one” when he or she comes along? It loses its meaning, value and symbolization. I love you isn’t sacred anymore, it evolves into just another word. Sometimes people express their affection with the word love, but are you positive it may be love? You may be caught up in the moment or even a common mistake; you are confusing love with the word like.

I’ve heard excuses such as “Oh, I don’t really love him, but he just wants to hear it.” Don’t be a liar. The relationship isn’t worth it, if your partner can’t accept that you haven’t felt that way yet. If you don’t feel love for someone, don’t pretend that you do just to make the other person feel better. Most of all, you can always find ways to let people know you care about them without using the word love. Save love for someone special, not just for a partner that you know won’t last. Save it for a potential life partner, someone you can imagine being with for the rest of your life.

To say I love you should be the most humiliating, but yet completely honest moment of your life. It isn’t something you boast about; it isn’t an accomplishment or a failure. Love is a commitment and mutual trust. To admit that you love someone, you are letting go of being just an individual, but as two individuals coming together intervening as one. There are so many feelings, meanings, and significance involve that once you spill your love for the one who it was meant for, then only then, will you understand the real power of love. Till then, I cannot say I have or haven’t experience it, because surely if I did, I definitely wouldn’t tell you.