It’s a small word, with a big meaning. I will never forget watching Lin-Manuel Miranda (the brain and heart behind the Broadway hit, “Hamilton”) say, upon accepting his award, “Love is love is love is love is…LOVE.” My heart was ready to leap out of my chest, his words were that powerful and affirming to me. I like to hope that he woke up the world on that day, with a short but powerful poem that maybe, just maybe, loosened away some of the foundation behind so much of the firmly held discriminatory beliefs in our society.

L.O.V.E. It’s really that simple, people.

Love is turning on the television and watching the media cover a POSITIVE news story that is both heartwarming and uplifting, that doesn’t contain the words “Trump” or “terror” or “too soon.” Maybe someday, we’ll start seeing that again.

Love, though, is never too soon. Sometimes it’s messy and marvelous all at the same time. Sometimes it hurts, because, when we love so much, that’s just what happens. It’s the risk we take; we put our hearts out there and say, “OK, I’m making myself vulnerable, and I’m OK with it. I know that this person who I love will someday not be here, next to me. And I’m willing to take that risk, because even just one day of having known and loved that person will have been worth all the absence and loss and pain I will have to endure upon the person’s passing.”

In the words of that awful 80s song, “Love hurts.” It also heals. Hopes. Hangs on. Hangs in.

Sometimes love is manifested as imperfection, but, really, all that love ever is, is perfection. Who are WE (imperfection-filled humans that we are) to say that we know what perfection looks like? Maybe we think it’s imperfection when it’s really quite the opposite. Love, in all its messiness, is absolute, stunning, perfectly choreographed PERFECTION.

For me, one definition of LOVE is a warm dog curled up in the space behind your knees, snoring, as you read Your Favorite Book and watch your husband’s glasses tilt ever forward onto the tip of his nose as he dives into that scintillating scientific journal article. Boring but beautiful. Leading a life of quiet but NOT of desperation.

Love is the silly grin of my child in the photo below, perfectly poised and peering between the “O” and the “V” (the center of my heart, after all!!!!) and enjoying a fun day watching that historic train engine chuff-chuff-chuff into the Manassas train yard. Throngs of people were there. And so were we.

So were we.

SHOW UP in your life. Enjoy it. Stop planning, stop looking backward, for just a few breaths. Enjoy now. Enjoy it.

Every. Single. Delicious. Minute.

Love is never too late.