Love is action, idea, emotion. Love is raw and strange and can be both inviting and repellent. Love is so many things and yet one thing. We love. We are in love. We are lovers. We make love. We would love to… What then, is the right way to define love?
Love as action is what we do when we show someone our love. We place our love upon someone when we care to show them how we feel about them. We do this in a number of ways. We simply tell them how we feel. We use sweet talk in words we may never had thought would escape our lips on purpose! We say things like Shmoopie and Muffin, Honey Lamb and Kitten. Some of us actually repress the need to vomit when we find ourselves talking this way to our beloved. What mush pile is it that love has seen me become, we ask.
We buy gifts for each other. We give tokens of our love. We sometimes put a great deal of thought into these gifts yet at other times we do not. We feel it necessary to remind people how we feel about them as if they would forget from day to day. A gift that says I love you might be a plush toy that has written upon it somewhere, those very words. It might, on the other hand be a piece of jewelry or a piece of art. Its representation in gifts is infinite really.
Love letters, love notes, love poems; outpourings on paper of our emotive need to tell another our truest feelings. These are the kinds of proof of love that a person is likely to retain, even after love may have fled. Personally, this is my favorite method of expression of any emotion. It can be mysterious and telling. The written word is completely at your mercy and you are free to shape it exactly as you wish.
Songs can be a fantastic expression of love. There are so many to choose from that a body is sure to have immeasurable choices at any one time. Every great crooner in the world has written a song that when you hear it you can feel ,in the very core of you, a personal serenade! Every person has in common that song that makes you feel a certain way, reminds you of a special person or moment. Your life may even have a soundtrack of the season! Alanis Morissette, Tori Amos, Daughtry…all excellent choices for the lovers both new and tortured!
There are other ways to show love. We give flowers, sometimes even going to great pains to make sure the flower itself, besides being a thing of beauty, also has a unique significance. A red rose, for example, has an entirely separate meaning than a yellow rose. If you give a lover a yellow rose, it implies friendship and may lead to hurt feelings. Who knew that flowers could be so tricky?
We cook for one another. We show off our culinary talents to impress our mates. We make picnic lunches for a romantic beach excursion. We prepare several course meals for our love’s family who we know is judging our skills at handling the future dietary care of their son or daughter. We braise the meat and fluff the stuff. We examine the feeding faces for any sign of distaste and play over and over in our minds about the lack or the excess of seasonings…all for love.
All of the material ways to show love does not measure on the scale when compared to the way you make someone feel with how you treat them. It is important to pay attention to what it is your partner needs. Respect for the feelings of one another is one of the keys to success.
