I’ve been thinking about love lately and what this word means and how we use it and why we say it and need it and misunderstand it and crave it and write songs and poems about it.

I wrote a short piece about these three words, I love you, a few years ago for a book I never did write, and as I read it this morning I still like the message of it, as I need to continually remind myself about love because I can take it for granted and throw the word around as if it were just any old word.

I love you. Three special words when combined in this way. One by one, let’s break it down.

I. Who is the I that says I love you? Which part of I says it? Where is I located?

I. Me. Myself. Nancy. Bones and blood and nerves and muscles. Do I think of myself as a body when I say I in this sentence: I love you? No, not usually. Do I think of myself as a mind with feelings, thoughts, memories? Is this what I is? Not really. So then where is the I that says I love you? Who is the I? What is the I? I’m not sure. So, if I don’t even know what or where or who I is exactly, how can I know you?

Saying the words over and over and over – they lose all meaning. The I disappears. You makes no sense. And love, well, love remains in the middle of it all. Love without subject or object. Love without feeling and muscle. Just love. Pure and simple.

That makes sense to me. Some kind of gut-level, bone-marrow sense. Love moving back and forth between I and You and You and I and disappearing each other. And love remaining and doing nothing but what it’s meant to do. Which is to be there in the middle, asking nothing, taking nothing, being everything.