I want to talk about love today.
I’ve been listening to Leo Buscaglia who is this marvelous man who uses the word “marvelous” a lot. In his life, he taught about and talked about love. If you ever feel like you are closed off to the world or like you’re guarded and you want to open yourself up and you want to feel love for other people, you need to check out Leo Buscaglia. He’s amazing that way.
So we are listening to him in the car (my twelve year old son is in the car) and I say, “Don’t you just love this guy?” My son responds, “Love is a little strong of a word.” I am just floored by this. Partly because he’s talking about Leo Buscaglia! If that guy was here in our presence, he would be hugging us, we would adore him, he would adore us. He just spread love everywhere in his life. There’s that.
But the really upsetting part about it for me was that this is what he is learning. This is what he is learning from society, from what he is exposed to, from who he hangs out with, his family, his friends, our household, from me. He’s learning that some things are worthy of the word love and some things are not worthy of the word love.
That is so messed up, and it’s such bullshit. And it’s sad, because that word should be used for everything. We shouldn’t be deciding that something is worthy of love and something else is not worthy of love.
But that’s what we teach them. When they have a conversation about someone they like they say, “Do you like her? Do you like-like her? Do you love her?” That’s the vocabulary we’ve given them when we could be teaching them to say things like, “Are you ready to make a romantic commitment to her? Are you ready to start calling her your girlfriend?” It’s not about love, right?
We should be giving love everywhere. Everywhere. Loving everything. People might say that if we start tossing that word around it might lose its value, but that’s not true. That’s not true at all. It will always have value. It’s the only word worth saying.
I have been a guarded person in my life. I have loved and not told people and I have withheld love. I am done with that. I have made a commitment to myself that I am going to pour as much love out of my being as I possibly can when I walk through this world.
When I heard him say that this morning it was both upsetting but it also made me feel motivated and driven to teach him something different. I want to be different in what I teach and how I live my life so that the people who come in contact with me really feel it, feel love. Feel it coming from me. Feel me pouring it out or sprinkling it or putting it everywhere. I’ve made that commitment.
I want to change the language that we give people so that we can get back to the fact that it is the only word. Just like the Beatle’s said in their song, The Word. Say the word and you’ll be free. That word is love. It’s never too strong. It’s always the right thing. We need to talk a lot more about how we do love things. Not, “Did you tell her you love her?”
What do you mean? I’ve met people that I’ve known that I love within five seconds! There are people that I haven’t even met that I know I love. That love resides within us and we have to have to have to let it out. Show it. Allow the world to feel it from us.