You may be thinking, Of course there is a difference between living and loving. They are two different words with completely different meanings. According to dictionary.com, to live is “to continue to have life” or “to maintain or support one’s existence,” and to love is “to have love or affection for” or “to need or require; benefit greatly from.” Seeing that these two words are taught to us at a young age and are used throughout our lives, their definitions seem obvious. We throw these words around every day, but how often do we actually sit down and contemplate the true meaning behind them? My guess is not that often.
It turns out that these two distinct words are more similar than we thought. The only difference between them is one letter. I. When this letter is all by itself, it carries so much weight. Even the most selfless people think in terms of “I” every day. This letter is how we describe ourselves, how we convey our emotions, and basically how we think. When you take the “I” out of life, what are you left with? A jumble of letters that makes no sense. So what would happen if we similarly stopped focusing on ourselves and started focusing on something else. Just like the removal of that one letter changes the meaning of the group of letters, the removal of thoughts of ourselves could have similar consequences. Depending on what that new focus is, we may be left in a state of confusion because we are in a new situation and are expected to have a new mindset. How are we supposed to act? What are we supposed to do?
What are we supposed to shift our focus to? Easy. Instead of thinking about ourselves, we need to think about Others. Coincidentally, when we replace the “i” in live with an “o,” we get love. We can not truly live life and utilize all of the gifts that we were each graced with unless we have devoted living our lives for others. We should live to help others, to see them succeed, to comfort them in times of need, to laugh with them, to cheer them up. The list is infinite, but each objective carries the same message: in order to live, we must love others and put them before ourselves.
It is at the point when we learn to love others more than ourselves and to live for them that the meaning of “living” and “loving” becomes the same. I take back what I previously said about these two words having different meanings, and I lied about the title of this article, because, to me, living and loving are the same. Loving is living, but it is not living for yourself. It is living for others.
The simple switch of one letter has substantial meaning. It is this change of one letter that makes living and loving both the same and different. Ultimately, the whole purpose of living is loving - loving others, loving ourselves, loving life. And the whole purpose of loving is living - living for one another, living for ourselves, living for love. If you haven’t learned how to love others fully and unconditionally, I recommend that you strive to do so, because it is only at that point that you truly start living.
