20260223 - "I Love you..."

 "I love you"...

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What does it mean?

I am aware of what it means generally.
We are familiar with those words commonly in many contexts.

This is a debate and deliberation I have been having in my mind for some time now.

We can love people - our parents, siblings, spouses, children, family, friends, etc.
We can love animals - dogs, cats, all forms of pets. Or generally be an animal lover overall. "I Love all animals" type...
Or, we can love things as well - so many times we have heard "I love my car", "I love my bike", "I love my house", etc, etc.

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But what does it mean?

I feel this (and I am sure there will be many other perspectives and interpretations)

I cannot really simply say "I love someone" and leave it at the level of words.

My love towards someone can only become real if I find ways to express my love towards them.

Expressing love happens in several forms - care, affection, attention, concern, sacrifice, adjusting, compromising, letting go of ego, etc, etc. there are several ways to express our love towards someone.

However, it works the other way around. I can experience the expression of Love from others towards me and say "I feel loved" by someone.

Same thing with broad based statements - "I love everyone", "I love all animals", "I love all xxx...".
Really? can we love anyone without expressing anything towards them. 
I feel we can only love individual people/ animals/ things by that individual expression of our love one at a time to whatever degree.

Why did I start thinking about this?

Since my stroke, my ability to do or "express" anything has become extremely limited.
Sure I do some things here and there for the people I love. But it is very very limited in what I would like to have done to express my love towards them completely.

While I can just say in words that "I love you" to someone, I definitely feel my ability to express that love is stunted and very limited and I am unable to really express my love fully , as much as I want to...