Love.  What a word!  It contains so many connotations and emotions all at once.  To love has become in modern day society a very vague concept, ranging from adoration of people or even things, to having sex.  Lies have been accepted as poor paradigms of thought when related to love. One of the worst lies being; “I am so lonely.  There’s no one who really loves me, not even those I love.”  While that person may not be in a romantic relationship with someone at that moment, almost everyone loves someone and has someone that loves them.  To believe that this is untrue can be very dangerous to one’s mental well being, often leading to unhealthy behavior, or even suicide in severe cases. 

This lie is powerful!  Imagine your response if your best friend suddenly commits suicide without consulting you at all, but leaves a note saying that they were lonely and felt unloved.  You probably would be very sad and heartbroken.  You also could be quite upset because you would realize that no matter how much you loved them, that they wouldn’t recognize it, for they had accepted the lie as truth.  This is only one of the lies that misconceptions about love have made, and love’s reputation needs to be wiped clean.  The purest form of love, whether in a romance or friendship, is to have a deep and strong enough affection for someone to consider their life so much more important than your own that you would be willing to die for them.  If this is not fully true, then you simply may have a strong affection towards someone, and not love them.

This puts the power and meaning back into those famed words; “I love you.”  Every good romance book or movie has most likely contained these three words, because of their simplicity and power over the human heart.   But, without meaning my previous definition, those three words could mean absolutely nothing.  So the next time you say “I love you,” mean it.