I was just thinking about those three little words, "I love you". They're laden with such meaning. It's always something special when someone says, "I love you", whether it's a parent, sibling, close friend, or lover.
For the longest time I couldn't say those words to my parents. Those of you who've been following my blog over the past 2 to 3 years know that I've had my ups & downs with Mom & Dad. For many years I didn't feel at all loving towards them, which sounds terrible, I know. I respected them as my parents, tried to be a dutiful daughter, and to a certain extent did care because I didn't want to hurt their feelings. But I just wasn't sure if I actually loved them.
Me being me... I steadfastly refused to say the words until I was sure I could say them and mean them. Okay, rather intransigent and unnecessarily petty, you might think, but words are very important to me. They have power, and I don't wield them lightly. I always want to choose the correct word to convey exactly what I mean, in order to reduce misunderstandings and miscommunication to a minimum.
Anyway, I eventually reached a point where I realised that I do love my parents, even if I might not be able to gush that I couldn't have had better parents in a million years or that they've been the best parents in the whole wide world. They've been good parents, very human parents. Not the best, not perfect, but they probably got more things right than they did wrong. Do you know how hard it is to buy a Father's Day or Mother's Day card that doesn't gush??
While I've finally gotten over the hurdle and have started saying "I love you" to my parents, especially Dad, I've yet to say the words to anyone else, especially not in a romantic context. It's one of those things you can't take back once said -- so again, I want to be very, very sure before saying it.
When you think about it, though, the "I love you" said to a parent is different from that said to a lover. I guess it's unfortunate that English has only the single word, "love", to express this level of feeling. Everything else -- caring, affection, adoration, fondness, admiration, fascination, infatuation, devotion, passion -- none of these words come close to expressing the state of truly loving someone, whether it's loving someone passionately as a lover, deeply as a friend, or selflessly as a parent loves a child.
The ancient Greeks had 4 words to encompass various aspects of the concept of love: Storge, a kinship love or the natural caring and devotion that family members have for one another; Phileo, an affectionate, close friendship type of love; Eros, the passionate and sexual aspect of love which exists between lovers; and Agape, a selfless, unconditional love. It's also a love that is not primarily composed of emotion, but can be born of the will -- a love by which you can seek to "love your enemies", as Jesus adjured. (Incidentally, agape is the way God loves us, and is most clearly explained in I Corinthians 13.)
When I think of the words "I love you", no matter which of the other types of love they encompass, they are inextricably intertwined with agape as well. I don't think one can truly say one loves another unless one is willing to give of one's self unconditionally, put the other before yourself, and demonstrate love in action.
For example, in our culture, as adult children, when we demonstrate love to our parents we consider their comfort and try to abide by their wishes where reasonable, we afford them respect and are patient with their naggings or ramblings, we tend to them when they are old and infirm. I watched my parents care for my great-grandma, who died at the age of 98, and I saw agape in action. Of course there were also elements of storge, but the kind of selflessness Mom demonstrated in tending to my (towards the end) bedridden great-grandma could only have been inspired by agape.
Perhaps that's why I feel those three little words are so weighty. I want to be sure that when I say them, I really love the person with an agape love. And you know, I probably don't fully love my parents like that yet, especially considering how frustrated or irritated I get with Mom sometimes, and how short I occasionally am with her. But I want to love her that way, and I'm trying.
