"I love you".  Never have there been more powerful words uttered.  We have all said it, and we all want to hear it.  But when is it too much?  I had thought about this very thing several months ago.  I was going to write about it.  Do we say it too often, is it over used, is the meaning still the same?  Yes, I wanted to expand the thought a bit more, and then I decided not to write it.  I guess I didn't feel that such a powerful word was really worth a whole post. What can you really say about the word love?  How do you define it down to terms and speak to the positive and negative sides of the word?

But as it would happen, this very subject has been the topic of conversation lately.  I was recently speaking with a friend and she was telling me about a friend of hers that says "I love you" everytime they hang up the phone.  I understand that, I say it to my friends too.  The difference here, my friend says it back but doesn't know that she really means it.  She says it isn't that she doesn't care deeply for her friend, she just doesn't know if the word "love" is the appropriate word to use when speaking to this friend.  She is very old school, back when love was a word used to share a deep emotion you felt for someone. It was not a word to be taken lightly.

Then I think about a recent conversation with another person.  He said the word is used too much.  He even went as far as to say that I say it too much.   Everytime I hang up the phone with my family, no matter how many times I may have already spoken to them.  He proceeded to tell me that he would almost prefer to hear when I am not feeling the love for him, more so than when I do feel it. An interesting notion that did not sit well with me.

I recall Leo Buscaglia once writing that when we feel love, we need to share it, tell people when we feel it.  I agree. I think part of that reason for me, we don't know when it will be the last time we tell that person.  It is kind of like that with a past lover, you don't know when the last time you are together is actually the last time. So is it so wrong?

I have wondered a lot about the word "love" and how it is used.  We are a society that loves everything.  We love our new outfit, we love the new lipstick we just purchased, we love a song, a movie, the list goes on.  So what if my friend is right. We are saying it too much.  Maybe we are devaluating the weight of the word. Thirty years ago was the word more coveted than it is now?  Do we take liberties with the English language, or are we merely more apathetic to love?

I say "I love you" often, probably more than I should.  I know that when I answered my friend's phone the other day, her friend that she cares deeply for told me she loved me as she was hanging up the phone.  I said it back.  After all, what do you say to that?  I didn't want to hurt her feelings.  Maybe it has just become something that you say, no deep meaning, no harm, no foul. Just a word.

There are people in my life that I love very much, there are others in my life that I care deeply about.  Maybe when I tell those that I care for that I love them, it is my way of validating my friendship to them.  I say it as a way to let them know they mean a lot to me.  Many times I have hugged girlfriends and told them I loved them.  I meant it, I do love my friends.  Maybe it just sounds better to say "I love you", than to hug a friend and say, "You mean so much to me", even when they really do "mean so much to you".

No matter the reason, it seems to me that those three little words do in fact have a great deal of meaning.  Perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to say it if we don't mean it.  But we all know how we feel when we here it, it lights us up.  And depending on the context, it can mean everything.  I like to think no matter how it is meant, it touches the recipeint.  So here is to you, dear reader, you mean so much to me.  Just doesn't sound the same, does it?