You raise an interesting phenomenon; it seems in general, boys receive a message growing up that it is not okay to express feelings. I hope that this is changing with each new generation. As I grew up saying, “I love you” was not something I ever heard or said. I recall when my dad was dying I told him, “I love you” and the closest he came to saying it back was, “me too.” In my own family I am comfortable telling them, and my friends, I LOVE YOU…”right out loud.”
On this the day, the Feast of the Epiphany, I thank you for the epiphany you offer to us!
I would like to share this excerpt from today’s Writers Almanac, “The word “epiphany” comes from an ancient Greek word meaning “manifestation” or “striking appearance.” Writer James Joyce explained to his brother Stanislaus that epiphanies were sort of “inadvertent revelations” and said they were “little errors and gestures — mere straws in the wind — by which people betrayed the very things they were most careful to conceal.” He also wrote that the epiphany was the sudden “revelation of the whatness of a thing,” the moment when “the soul of the commonest object … seems to us radiant.” In Joyce’s Dubliners he ends with a story set at a party for the Feast of the Epiphany, “The Dead,” and the story ends: “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
May we let go of our fear and share the epiphany of Love with one another and in our caregiving, may all our thoughts be transformed into Loving action! ~Amen

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I was raised in a family where my parents did not verbally express their feelings to each other, nor to the children. Nowadays I’m described as a “touchy-feely” person; I am fine with this label. Life is too short to miss out on opportunities to show love and admiration. I admire the ocassional sensitive man; his visual reaction reminds me of being humbled, usually by something greater than ourselves.
The leaders in the world, in business, industry and in politics could learn a lesson from this meditation, and a sensitive man.

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What an amazing reflection. Thanks everyone for sharing!

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I have noticed that people will say, “love you” without the ‘I’. It seems that somehow it is more acceptable to say you love a person this way, than by saying it completely, “I love you.” I remember when my first nephew was an infant, less than a year old, hearing his other grandmother (not my mother) telling him over and over again “I love you” as she changed his diaper. My nephew of course was cooing and smiling in response.
We all need to hear over and over again, starting as babies and throughout our lives that we are loved. The idea of “loving leader” sounds wonderful to me.

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