Last week I was watching an episode of ‘Kim’s Convenience’, a wonderful, heartwarming sitcom from Canada, when something about the storyline struck me. In it, a co-worker signed a card to his boss with ‘Love, xyz’. Later, the boss (female, single, attractive) questioned why he’d signed love, if he didn’t mean it. Which got me thinking how cavalierly we use the word love to define all sorts of emotions, how the essence of this emotion has been diluted through the overuse, and sometimes, misuse of it.
As a child, an aunt would always send me birthday cards signed ‘Affectionately, xyz’. I didn’t think to question it. There was, after all, a lot of affection there. In an attempt to emulate her, I also started signing my cards the same way in my teens. I remember being accused of being uptight because ‘Love, xyz’ was the commonplace inscription used by all and sundry, and my ‘Affectionately’ signalled a reluctance to be loving towards my peers. Maybe, even back then, at some level I baulked at the oversimplification of a complex emotion like love.
Today, I hear so many ‘love you’s’ being thrown about it makes my head spin. It also makes me wonder, what does love mean to these people? Would they throw themselves in front of a bus for me? Would they care for me if I was bedridden? Would they forgive me anything? Because, inherently, that’s what true love is about.
That’s not to say that love should be difficult or conditional, but it’s not a word that should be bandied about in so careless a fashion. And the sad fact is, it is fashionable to use ‘love’ to describe any emotion that you are too lazy to define.
“I love that painting!”
“I love chips!”
“Love you!”
Yes, I get it. It conveys a depth of emotion, but really, if there is that much love being spread around, why is there still so much strife in the world?
By all means, love and love deeply. But caring, fondness, affection, attraction, desire, excitement, passion are all valid emotions that don’t need to be clustered under the large beach umbrella called love. There are so many nuances to life and to our feelings, and love is the purest emotion of them all. Let’s not dumb it down to mean everything. Because then it will mean nothing at all.
