“In contemporary Chinese,\u00a0Ai<\/em>\u00a0(\u611b) is often used as the equivalent of the Western concept of love,\u00a0as both a verb (e.g.\u00a0wo ai ni<\/em>\u00a0\u6211\u611b\u4f60, or “I love you”) and a noun (such as\u00a0aiqing<\/em>\u00a0\u611b\u60c5, or “romantic love”). However, due to the influence of Confucian\u00a0Ren<\/em>, the phrase \u2018Wo ai ni\u2019 (I love you) carries with it a very specific sense of responsibility, commitment and loyalty.”<\/p>\n

I was able to find the hanji (Chinese character) for ai on wikipedia where I also learned that it is made of parts “indicating a heart (middle) is put inside of accept, feel, or perceive (top + bottom), which shows a graceful emotion.”<\/p>\n

I like that. \u00a0A heart surrounded by acceptance, feeling or perception? \u00a0Combined with commitment, responsibility and loyalty? \u00a0Be still my heart.<\/p>\n

And of course it makes me wonder about the ways that we communicate with partners, children and other members of the family. \u00a0Does “I love you” carry unspoken values and expectations for behavior? \u00a0Do they imply promises and permissions? \u00a0And how does that stack up with our actions and the way our loved ones perceive them?<\/p>\n

And how do we know that it is (or is not) the same for our partners and our kids?<\/p>\n

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Love. A noun, a verb and a way to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[445,569],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-3139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-special-topics","category-thinking","tag-relationships","tag-valentines-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3139"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=3139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}