Some people love with their hands. They reach out with little offerings like a rock or a note. They pick a flower from the side of the road because its beauty reminded them of yours. They ensure you remember your sweater on a cold day and you discover it’s been freshly warmed from the dryer. They simmer soup on the stove for when you arrive home hungry, having forgotten to eat. This love is fixing, building, carrying, driving, remembering. It seems to be psychic, making our life softer before we can even notice it was hard. It feels so real because it leaves evidence everywhere. Tiny monuments. Proof. You can hold it in your palm, stack it on the counter, count it.
Sometimes I stare at all of it like a woman standing outside a language she never learned how to speak because my love always feels harder to photograph. I don’t arrive with armfuls of gifts so when I think of how I love others it doesn’t seem as tangible or as measurable. My inability to name how I show up for others makes me wonder if I am giving enough at all.
What do I bring to the table besides myself?
It seems like a silly question because I never equate their value in the same way. The people I love are not defined by the things they give me. I don’t love them because of trinkets or favors. I love the way they laugh before they speak. The way their presence changes the energy of a room. I love the way safety arrives with them and the way my body exhales just thinking about their essence. I love them. Always them. Their gifts are just physical evidence of something invisible. It’s all a bonus, but it is not the true love that is purely generated by their existence.
I struggle to believe the same thing could be true about me.
Could it really matter that I make people feel seen?
Could it really matter that my words stay living inside someone for years?
Could confidence be a gift?
Could presence itself be an offering?
Could the way I witness people be as tangible as soup on a stove?
I think part of me keeps searching for a receipt so I can tally my worth beside everyone else’s. I am longing to measure because then I could hold it up as protection against the terrifying possibility that maybe I am too abstract to keep. The idea that my love is making others remember themselves just doesn’t cut it as a return on my investment. Acknowledging that my presence rearranges the temperature of a room is too much soft science. If being is a gift, in and of itself, but it disappears directly into the recipients’ nervous system, I can’t label it a successful metric.
“Look!! SEE! I contributed this much. I carried this much. I love THIS much.”
But I know that invisible things such as breath, safety, warmth, belonging, permission, or hope, are too small to be seen with the naked eye. The brain rarely registers them until the moment has passed or they become absent from us. That is the tragedy of love: the giver can’t witness its impact because love was never meant to be proven. The most life-changing things we give each other were never designed to sit on mantels.
Only the soul gaze of the receiver has the power to see it in the moment.
I may never fully know the shape of what I have given away. That is the risk of love. I must grieve that piece of it and surrender it to the aether. I must keep learning to trust that something sacred happened even when there is nothing left behind to confirm it to the ego.
