"I LOVE YOU." There - I said it. Happy now? Not quite.

I used to almost never say, “I love you.” The only times I would really utter the words were when

a) I knew it would somehow hurt the other person if I didn’t say it, because obviously…I didn’t want to feel guilty (and even then, I sometimes STILL didn’t),
b) when the “I love you” actually meant “thank you” for loving and caring for me, or
c) when I would say it at the end of casual conversation and didn’t really mean it.

Or in other words – when it was conditional.

Holy crap – how selfish is that? Real selfish. Selfish beyond human comprehension, actually. But I was ok with being selfish – because when you’re selfish, you don’t actually think that you are. You just think you deserve everything you want.

By the way, when you think like this…you’re a total moron. You’re also completely insane. You have no regard for the truth; you just want to feel good. This view on life, as I have lovingly come to realize, is thoroughly, wholly and insanely moronic.

It is extremely important to me to mean what I say (and was even important to me to some delusional extent when I used to think very selfishly). What are our words, if not meaningful? Truly worthless.

That is the reason I couldn’t utter those giant and beautiful words – because I didn’t understand love. I didn’t want to go around saying I loved people and things, when I fully knew I didn’t love them. See, this is the difference between then and now; then, I just didn’t give two craps about love and truth (which undeniably go hand-in-hand) and now, I desire to understand love and give it to others.

I’m very sorry to have to use “I” and “me” so often in this quick story. Although, it is a necessary evil to bring into the light just how confining, limiting, and more importantly, wrong it is to only think of oneself.

The point of all this ranting is to express the everlasting importance of love. Love for God. Love for others. Love for oneself. Love in the “choice” sense, not the “feeling” sense. Love is a choice to be consciously seeking, understanding and in turn, loving, the Good forever and ever.

The phrase “the truth will set you free” keeps running back and forth between my ears. The-truth…will-set-you-free. And when you are free – you also free up the chains you’ve placed on people around you. In light of this thought…who wouldn’t want to know the truth?

Bring it on God. Bring. It. On.

Amen.