How Love Finds Meaning In Care
If you care about someone, saying “I Love You’ is not enough.
If you care about someone, if you truly, deeply, inexplicably love someone, then saying “I Love You” is not nearly, never really enough. Teach yourself the ‘language of care’. The sentiment of care defies all logic, it transcends the constraints of time and distance. Love on it’s own can’t speak, can’t express, can’t stand, can’t do. Love finds meaning through care. It finds grace, kindness, depth and purpose through care. Care is the magic elixir that can bring love back even from the depths of death and despair.
If you care about someone …
Make them a priority. Make them a priority not just when it’s easy, but when it’s difficult as well. If you care about someone, show up for them when you say you will. Show up for them when they least deserve it, because that is when they deserve it the most. Just be there for them, not becuase you have to be, but because you want to be. See, the easy things in life hold no weight.
It’s easy to love someone when they are perfect, when they are soft and light, when they are filled with hope and happiness. But loving someone when they are wearing their flaws like an apology, when they are breaking down, or when they have been carrying their hurt with them for the longest time - that is when it means the most. That is when you must show up for them.
If you care about someone…
Put your phone down. Sit across from them at dinner and listen to them. Give yourself the space to dive with them into deeper conversations, into the kind of quality time that makes you feel like you are the only two people in the world. Connect with them. Please, if you care about someone - Connect! Do not allow yourself to be pulled from those moments. Do not allow yourself to settle for talking about the weather or the monotony of life. Ask them what they dreamt about the night before. Ask them how that new song makes them feel. Tell them about your secret passions. Debate with them. Ask them the How, What, When, Where, Why, and let the story unfold. Teach them something new. Sit them down and laugh with them, lose yourself in time, in the shine of their eyes as they look at you and realise what you are doing.
Be present, not only in your body, but also in your mind. Be there with them. In darker times, in lonelier times, these moments will act as a life-raft and get you through. Know that. And so, work on it. Make room for them, their life, their story, their silences, their quirks, flaws, curiosities, vulnerabilities so you can witness how all these shadows within them come together to give your life, your joys more meaning - because they will. These very things will make you both more whole.
If you care about someone…
Let them know that you do. Always remind them that you appreciate the very heart within their chest. Always remind them that you want to protect who they are, that they are your favorite thing, and do not just do that with words. See, words are simple. They are easy. They are flat. When it comes to someone else’s soul, do not fill their head with silken poetry and one-liners. Monologues are not charming, even in movies. Words can often turn into bargaining tools. Do not string vowels and consonents together just to appease them. Show them that they matter to you.
Take action in making sure that they feel loved, always. Take action in making sure that on the toughest, darkest days, even when you are not physically around, they know that you will make sure they survive too. Let them know that it matters that they exist. Make sure that they feel loved by backing up what you speak.
If you care about someone…
If you truly care, just be good to them. Too many people take hearts into their own hands and they fail to protect them, they fail to nurture them. Too many people grow comfortable and complacent, they lose sight of what they have. They confuse the denseness, the solidity, the wholeness of what they have with a burden that will become too heavy and tiresome to carry. They take and take and take, and they rarely think about what they are giving. They forget that love is not something that should ever be done with one foot out of the door. They measure love against their own guilt and shame and don’t understand the void. They fill the vaccum with money, materialism and glitzy getaways. They forget that love should never be given in bare minimums.
Please, if you love someone, stand up for that. Be honest with them. Choose them every single day, and if you cannot, or if things change, let them go. Let them go, because if they love you deeply they will not have it within them to stop trying. They will not be able to walk away, to let things slide, because it is the fatal flaw in people who love with everything they have. It is the only way the know how to be. Do not keep someone around only to love them in halves and have-nots. They are better off giving their love to love to someone who has room within their chest to accept it. And you are better off figuring out what your heart desires before you try to open it to someone who will never stop trying to give you the world.
Because, at the end of the day, if someone truly cares to be in your life, they will. Truly - they are capable, they will make the effort, they will show up. And if they do not - let that be your closure.
