Then Why Don't You Marry It?

“We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”

---Dr. Seuss

I remember that in grade school the line was --- if you love it so much, why don’t marry it? Whether you be referring to raisins, coke or little Bobby, the rule applied. I’m curious why it’s so easy to use the word love? To say I love you…? I know that in my own life I use the word often, in the more casual “I love chocolate” way and the more serious “I love you” way.
I’ve felt it, said it and I’ve meant it.
I also know the difference when I say I love you vs. feeling “in love” with someone--- at least in my own life. Whether I understand love on a grander scale --- that’s up for debate. Articulating what I do understand --- impossible. Demonstrating it with flowers and candy --- for that, there’s Mastercard.

But so here’s the reason for this ramble. I’m confuzzled. When a colleague says I love you as she walks off – does she really? She can’t, we don’t even know each other that well. Someone you’ve been friends with for years says it, and it resonates, you feel it. Though I like to think the people involved know what I mean when I utter those 3 words, I know what I mean, but what if we are all making these grandiose assumptions? Making the same assumptions? What if it wasn’t meant in the way I think it was? The word can be used too loosely sometimes.

But why do I trust it when it comes from an old friend more than a friend I met a week ago? You can fall in love in a moment, yet I still have this nagging thought that time is indeed a factor and I’m not entirely sure why.

Maybe the whole thinking with your brain vs your heart notion is playing a factor. Maybe I can’t let my brain take a backseat (entirely) in these matters. Maybe what I’m doing is catching myself in a web of faulty assumption. I know feelings can develop quickly, yet I cannot mentally accept it when it translates into what I might misconstrue as a hasty “I love you”. Cognitive dissonance anyone? Sometimes being introspective or self-aware or whatever this personal psychotherapy session I’ve got going on can be a pain in the ass.