While growing up, I have had a lot of crushes — like seriously, a lot of them! But, I have never let even a single one of them have any hint about it. I may even have gone to the extent of making fun of some(just harmless fun), in front of my friends, only so that nobody would even give a thought to the fact that I may secretly have a crush on the person.

I guess it was just because I was too scared of rejection; we all are, aren’t we? So scared was I, that I wouldn’t even tell my friends about it, for the fear that it would leak somehow and fall on the person’s ear. But however, I wouldn’t be scared of the fact that I made fun of the person in front of my friends; even that could reach his ears, right?

When I try to reason this out though, I feel it was because, somehow, I felt that showing my love for the person (who may or may not have felt the same for me), would have portrayed me as weak. However, did making fun of these people with my friends make me look any stronger? And did it really matter? But, in reality, most of us do hide our love, and showing hate feels easy.

How often do we say ‘I Love You’ to our parents or our siblings? Similarly, once the honeymoon period of a marriage is over, how often do we say ‘I Love You’ to our spouse? If we think about it, it’s not very often, right? Maybe we do say it to our spouse every now and then, but hardly ever to our parents. And giving it a thought, I don’t remember saying it directly to my siblings ever!

Now, how often do we fight with them, or stop talking to them to show our anger or hate? There are quite a few instances to think of. And the most number of fights we have all had is with our siblings. We have told our parents, at several occasions that they won’t understand what we are going through, or fought with them if any of our wishes isn’t fulfilled. Let’s not even get into how much we may fight or argue with our spouse.

We know that these people are the most important ones in our lives and we love them dearly, more than life itself, as we may say. We fight and argue with them as we believe we own them and have a right over them. We take them for granted. Same goes for a few of those special friends who are like family to us — sisters/ brothers from another mother. We don’t ever shy in showing them our anger. Then why don’t we ever show them our love as easily as we show them our hate?

I have noticed many times, that as sweet as I am while talking to strangers, I may lack a lot of that sweetness while interacting with the people who really mean the world to me. The justification that I give myself is that they belong to me. I can be myself with the people I love and I don’t need to pretend. But, to think about it, don’t the people we love deserve to be shown our love and appreciation? We may show them our hate and anger, for sure; we may speak our mind and open our hearts in front of them, but why not show them our love as well?

We always worry what others will think about us; mind you, these others are always strangers or people who don’t really matter to us much. We are on our best behaviour in front of these people. But, does it really matter what these people think about us? It doesn’t, as they hardly know the real us. When we aren’t concerned with showing our true self to our loved ones, anyone apart from them should be the least of our concerns.

As we proceed in this journey of life, we have heard people say for several people, that they do love you a lot but they don’t show. Some may even say that this is his/her way to show that they love or care. Sometimes though, I feel it is necessary to show how much we love the other person, and our love should be clear to the other person. Actions matter I agree, but sometimes, PDAs (public displays of affection) are also necessary. Don’t our loved ones deserve to know how much we love them and be pampered by us every now and then?

We express our love when we lose a person; when they won’t even get to know about it, but not while they are in our lives. Shouldn’t we tell them how fortunate we feel we are, to have them in our lives while they are around, and not wait till it is too late?

When we write a eulogy for a person, it is usually written when the person is no more. We pour our hearts out in it. It is a way to show how amazing the person was and how dearly we will miss them. But do they know how we actually feel for them while they are alive? I feel everyone should know how the other actually feels about them (at-least our close ones). This way we won’t have the regret that we didn’t let the other person know of our love towards them; we won’t have to write in our eulogy that we wish we would have gotten the chance to let the person know while they were with us.

A simple ‘Thank You’, ‘Sorry’, ‘I Love You’ go a long way. We may not see the effect immediately, but it does make a difference in the long run. It makes the other person realise that we do care and appreciate their efforts. Above all, it shows that the person matters to us and we choose them over our own ego. It feels great to know that we are loved. Even we should make sure that the ones we love are well aware of it, and not deprive them of the amazing feeling.

A quote that explains this perfectly goes as follows: