Category Archives: I love you

LOVE YOU BROTHER

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Remember to say I love you to those you love. I don’t know what it is about those three often maligned and misused words, I love you, that makes them as special as they are, but I do believe that when they are meant, they should be said. Not only to the many who deserve to hear it, but by the many who deserve to say it.

My friend Frank died at 7:35 yesterday morning with the two he loved and who loved him the most by his side. Like many others, I loved Frank. And whenever I’d say, Love you Frank, he’d smile at me and say, Love you brother. And I knew he meant it. I can still hear his voice saying those words to me, Love you brother. He meant them too, all three of them.

The words I love you are remarkably hard for some of us to say. For still others, they are difficult to hear. Still others avoid the phrase because it is has been used as a tool for manipulation and, in some cases, cruel manipulation, in too many scenarios.

However, I think the only necessary guideline for saying it is honesty. Say it if you mean it. Your history, those who betrayed you, used the phrase to manipulate you in one way or another, denied your ever hearing the phrase, none of these people deserve so much control over you today that they stop you from saying it at all.

A woman I love very much said to me recently, “Peter, you love everybody.” Not true. Not by a long shot. Rest assured, there are people I don’t love and there I even people I dislike, some intensely. But what I do believe in is letting those you feel love for know it. While there is certainly such as thing as too much hate in the world, there is no such thing as too much love. However, there is such a thing as not enough love – and not enough expression of the love that is there.

The first game the Yankees played after Yankee captain Thurmon Munson’s tragic death in 1979 was in Yankee Stadium against the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles catcher was Rick Dempsey, a former Yankee and back-up catcher for Munson. The Yankee manager was Billy Martin. Dempsey sent a note to Martin in the Yankee clubhouse before the game. In it he told Martin that he, like so many others, loved Thurman and he, like so many of us, did not always remember to tell people he loved that he loved them. And so, in this note, he told Martin that he loved him.

And so if you love people in your life, whether you love them as friends or more, tell them. Use the words I love you – all three of them. I would ask the few of you who might feel saying I love you is a wimpy thing to do why saying it is so hard for you to do? Were it an act of weakness, to say them, it ought to be easy, no?

Take care of yourselves in life. Love each other as best you can. And when you do, say so.

I am going to miss you terribly, Frank.

Love you brother.
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FALLING IN LOVE

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Falling in love is an experience many of us hope for, yet, when it happens, doubting and second-guessing begin in earnest. For many of us, wen it comes to falling in love, the ability to allow it to happen is fragile at best.

There all kinds of theories about what falling in love is. In an article in Discovery, Professor Arthur Aaron from State University of New York at Stonybrook says, falling in love is, in part, rooted to our innate desire for self-expansion. Reading that made me immediately check my waistline. You can’t too careful.

Italian sociologist Francesco Alberoni, according to one article, believed falling in love “is a rapid process of destructuration-reorganization called the nascent state. In the nascent state, the individual becomes capable of merging with another person and creating a new collectivity with a very high degree of solidarity. Hence the definition: falling in love is the nascent state of a collective movement formed of two people only.” Moreover, “In order to understand if someone is truly in love, the individual must be put to truth tests and, in order to find out if he or she is loved in return, the beloved is also put to reciprocal tests. The incandescent process of the nascent state through these tests gives way to certainty and produces a stable love relationship.”

Reading that made my hair hurt and my eyes glaze over. No offense, Mr. Alberoni.

I am not about to say I have the answer. But I can tell you what I do believe. I believe falling in love is an experience rooted in nature itself. It is not about thought, reasoning, or intellectual agility. Moreover, over thinking and over analyzing has derailed more than one instance of true love. In fact, they play a large part in why so many of us get tangled up in doubt and second-guessing; we inflict the intellect on something that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the intellect.

Falling in love is a gift from nature itself, It is about emotion, spirituality, and feelings. There is a good reason why feelings are feelings and thoughts are thoughts. They are not the same thing!

Doubting love, doubting that you are falling in love often comes from earlier wounds in life. Many if us have grown to be understandably afraid we will be wounded again. Sometimes we are still under the spell of earlier life messages that told us we were unworthy of anything wonderful in life. Messages that are, by the way, bullshit.

Falling in love is very much like experiencing the breathtaking glory of a sunset or sunrise; it is like the mystical majesty of early morning clouds lifting off the mountaintops; or the quaint delicacy of early morning dew on the front lawn, when every blade of grass glistens in the cool morning air. When you experience any of these wonders, there is no discernible gap between seeing it and experiencing it. It happens all at once. You don’t need thought to know it. You just need to be open to it. It is the same with love, with falling in love.

One final thought, falling in love can be very scary, particularly for the far too many of us who have been wounded in life. This is why I agree with Professor Aaron when he said, “(K)indness is the strongest indicator for a successful long-term relationship.”

Remember, kindness, like love, is not about thought, reasoning, or intellectual agility either. Like love, kindness is about emotion, spirituality, and feelings. That is why they go together, and why, if you are blessed enough to have discovered both, you have not just fallen in love, you are on your way to being in love, and that, my dear reader, is the greatest gift of them all.

There is a line in a Bruce Springsteen song that says, “God help the man who doubts what he’s sure of.” Women too.

DON’T FORGET TO SAY I LOVE YOU

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Don’t forget to say I love you. That is something events like the tragic crane collapse in Manhattan this week reminds us. Two young men, their lives rich with life, were killed: Donald Leo, a 30-year-old crane operator who was going to get married this June 21, and Ramadan Kurtaj, a 27-year-old émigré from Kosovo. The New York Times reports that in addition to fighting for his life in Kosovo, Kurtaj “worked long hours on water and sewer lines so that he could send money home to his parents.”

When I read these stories my body stills, tears wet my eyes, and my heart breaks for those close to the loss. I remember a poignant note sent by a former Yankee catcher to a Yankee manager the day 32-year-old Yankee captain Thurman Munson was buried. Munson was killed when a plane he was flying crashed in Canton, Ohio on August 2, 1979.

The first game the Yankees played after Munson’s death was in Yankee Stadium against the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles catcher was Rick Dempsey, a former Yankee and back-up catcher for Munson. The Yankee manager was Billy Martin. Dempsey wrote a note to Martin. In it he told Martin that he, like so many, loved Thurman and he, like so many of us, didn’t always remember to tell people he loved that he loved them. And so, in this note, he told Martin that he loved him.

Life, with all its bumps and bruises, is a beautiful thing. Sometimes the bumps and bruises part can rent so much space in our heads that we forget to notice the beautiful things, the wonderous things, the people in our lives that we love and who love us. So next time you’re talking with someone you love, don’t forget to tell them. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think there is any such thing as telling someone you love them too many times. Have you ever asked anyone to stop telling you?