Hopefully a couple of weeks ago, instead of walking through the halls of Tahoma as you usually do, mindlessly on your phone, you noticed a decent amount of people wearing shirts and hats with hearts on them. And by the way, these people weren’t accidentally twinning like when you and your best friend wear white vans and yoga pants. No, they were taking part in a movement started by our very own leadership to promote kindness and give us an English lesson on verbs.

Don’t tell the English department though because I had to visit Google and brush up on what a verb actually was. (And you better not judge because you know you did too). And after relearning that it was an action word, I finally understood what this whole “Love is a Verb” movement was getting at.

Today the word love gets tossed around more often than one would like. Which is a shame because the ancient Greeks, all those curly haired men lecturing each other, had defined 8 different types of love. (How romantic). For example, the Greeks had “Ludus” a flirting type of love like that time when someone bought you a chocolate milk just because you looked so beautiful. (You wish).

You see, Love was important to the ancient Greeks and they respected it since it was and still is powerful. I tried to look up if there were any different types of “like,” but of course there isn’t. You either like something or you don’t. End of story. It’s sad to hear people in the hallways saying “Wow, I sure love her Birkenstocks” or “I love Fortnite” because love isn’t about shoes or popular video games. Let’s be honest would you die for these things? Or take them out on a movie date? Of Course not! (But if you would, Tahoma has very good counselors that can help you get through any obsessions). Anyhow, after connecting the dots that love is a verb or an action, I was thrilled to help promote what love really is. So, I hopped on the bandwagon and got myself some merch for a very reasonable price (about as much as a small lunch from Starbucks). 

After slipping on the very stylish clothes, my head started whirring with ideas of where I could show love by doing acts of kindness. I started imagining scenarios of myself doing some superhero stuff that you would probably find in the new Avengers movie. Things such as catching any teachers who accidentally fell from the third story or helping evacuate people out of class in case of a meteor strike. You see I had all these great ideas and intentions, yet intentions, unfortunately, aren’t verbs and during the whole theme week, I didn’t do anything superhero-like. I didn’t even rescue a single cat from a tree.

The week went by and it was Friday. It was a long and stressful week too. I spent my time walking through the halls looking at videos of cats stuck in trees to cheer myself up. And as I was leaving school some random kid stopped, looked at me and said: “Hey, How are you doing?”.

I responded without paying much attention that I was good, and mechanically, asked: “How about yourself?”.

He also responded “Good”, but you could see in the way his teeth were tinted that he was actually doing good. (That’s right, teeth tints are great predictors of emotion because no happy person ever wakes up late to school and has to either sacrifice breakfast or teeth hygiene). Anyhow, I went on walking, but I felt different. You see, that little act of kindness, that little act of love really made my day. A random kid made my day just by saying hello.

After this, I realized something important. To love, you don’t need to do super-heroic things. The smallest thing like saying hello usually are the most powerful. In our lifetime, we might never have a chance to save some poor tabby from an oak tree. But any one of us can say hello. In all honesty, you (or I) don’t need to save any cats. In fact, they can probably land on their feet if you give them a little nudge. But we do need to say hello. If you don’t do it for yourself then do it for Adele.