"Good night dad...I love you dad!"

Today being Valentine's Day, I find it fitting to write a post related to the that sweet nectar that is typically abound when we nurture beautiful relationships with life partners, family members, friends, animals, and even the occasional stranger that manages to touch our heart with a kind smile or thoughtful gesture.  To me, out of all the possible experienced emotions, love stands on its own with probably the most powerful influence in my life.  Books, poetry, songs, letters, movies, plays, speeches, paintings, sculptures and many more have all been utilized over and over again to create some kind of permanent repository for this singular emotion throughout history.  Even the scientific community has dug in deep in efforts to make headway and try to understand the underlying mechanisms that take place in the human body when we experience the various flavors of love.  If you have a few minutes to spare today, take a pause for the cause and go ahead, do a quick online search for "neurology of love" or "language of love" and get ready to discover everything from scientific research, to sexual education, to marital counseling.  The information out there is boundless and fascinating to say the least.

Even more fascinating though is how one single word, love, can conjure so many images in my mind and still prove to be so incredibly hard to describe.  I am not alone though, even most dictionaries are all over the place when they try to pin down a single definition for this incredibly complicated emotion.  However, I can somehow instantly perceive when I am genuinely being loved.  Is that not amazing?  To me, love is by far the most powerful tool that I can use to bring out greatness in someone else.  When I love someone, I reach beyond my own needs and wants to find ways to bring happiness to them.  Is this the same way others feel too?  Or am I speaking a unique language taught to me by my parents since the day I was born?  Obviously I did not always know how to love in this way, otherwise I would of never hurt so many people on my way to becoming a mature adult.

I share these thoughts with you because I think it is crucial that parents realize that as we raise our children, we are inadvertently teaching them a language that will probably be the most important form of expression in their adult lives.  If I am unable to teach them how to show their love or give their love in productive and healthy ways, eventually they might not be able to do the same for their children either.  Worse, my children and their children will find themselves gravitating towards other sources of what might seem as love, but in reality not be love at all.  This particular scenario typically plays itself out in codependent and hurtful relationships that block their progress and ability to grow as individuals in a healthy way.

It was already past ten at night and I was ready to unwind and turn myself in for bed.  My oldest son had two friends with him and they were sitting in the family room playing some video game with the volume turned all the way down.  As I approached the adjacent kitchen area to make sure there were no dishes left to clean or put away, all I could hear were their own silly comments about the characters that each one of them were playing in some frantic battle on his XBOX game console.  Fingers pressing buttons and gyrating thumbs created a spectacle on the large screen television that could easily give an ill child an epileptic seizure.  As I walked away I thought my "goodnight guys!" farewell statement had been lost in the middle of their obviously hyperactive game play behavior.  As I was just one step away from entering my own room at the other end of our home I heard the unmistakable and beautiful expression coming out of my now 19 year old son, "Good night dad...I love you dad!"  This my beloved readers was the most beautiful thing I had heard all day long.  He is without a shadow of a doubt, his father's son!

Dad