I love you: the connection we have, not words

​There are a lot of good habits. I'm sure many people would suggest saying I love you is one of them.

I'm no longer sure of that.

I don't want to talk people out of telling people they love them. I've just been thinking a lot about what it means for ME to tell people I love them.

Because 'I love you' CAN become a habit. It can become words that spill from our mouths at habitual times.

Before leaving for work. When coming home from work. Maybe after a kiss good night.

Maybe its the way we end a text to a friend. Or to our kids.

When I drop my boys off on Sundays and they get out of the car, I tell them I love them. They say I love you too. And I feel something deeply emotional in that.

Every time.

And I've thought about that. Because I haven't always felt something emotional when exchanging those words in my life. Rarely, actually.

It's often felt more like exchanging - well, words - and not emotions.

Emotions travel with you. They are the great transporter of the meaning and the depth of each others words. Without emotions you carry away just words.

Words that get lost among words.

I suppose one could suggest I feel something with my kids because they ARE my kids. Maybe. But I would argue back it's because I'm emotionally connected to my kids.

More than with anyone else, I'm connected to them - so I think it makes sense that their I love yous feel different. They don't have a different meaning - maybe, but they have a different feeling.

We can begin to let the words I love you become a replacement for the work of I love you. Saying I love you doesn't connect us; doing what I love you looks like does.

There's a danger in I love you beginning to sound like every other word in our language. There's a danger in it beginning to feel that way.

It can begin to go in one ear and out the other like so many other words. And that's a tragedy. Because I think more than any other words accessible to us, I love you was meant to go straight to the heart.

And stay there. Live there where humans are connected. Fuel.

I love you is designed, I think, to be the best description ever of a loving connection. I wonder more and more, though, if we are skipping the connection and going right to the description. Trying to give words the power that only the connection is designed to convey.

It's possible I love you now has too many definitions. The words a source of confusion far more than a source of comfort. And healing. 

I don't know. I've clearly thought about it a lot. And I've only concluded this:

For me going forward, when I say I love you I want my words to describe the connection I have with someone. I want it to be the best description ever. And, I would like to feel that way when I hear those words.

Kind of like I feel when those boys close the doors to the car and begin to walk away, but before they do, they say:

I love you.

I love you, the connection we have. Not the words we say.