I have come to really appreciate this statement: “Love begins and ends with attention.”
The word attend becomes about the investment we place in our relationships and our conscious effort to attend to those we love. We can find it in the 2:00 a.m. feeding of our newborn, in the hugs we give at the door, in the dinners we make to bring family to the table, in the little gifts of affection we buy, in the love notes we leave in our absence, in patiently tolerating the temper tantrums of our two year old, in the gatherings of holidays, in the distance shortened by a phone call, in the search for repair, in the kisses before bed, in the moments of shared grief and those of play and laughter.
For love to be healthy, it requires a joint effort. When one person attends, and the other doesn’t, it will change the value of love, the shape of it; it’s meaning will shift. And so, love begins and ends with attention; it is about our effort to feed the health of the relationships to those we love. All the more reason I’d say, to get our kisses before bed and our hugs in at the door 🙂
Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@kellysikkema