I love you?

"I love you." Is a statement and yet is almost never just that. It embeds in itself, a question when stated for the first time. It asks the listener a question of reciprocation. Do you love me?

I find that it is exceptionally difficult to ask this "statement" and yet when analysed it offers no explanation. If you do not ask, you can never know that s/he loves you and so you will surely never be loved. Yet if you ask, there is at least a chance s/he loves you.

The difficulty I believe arises in the superficial analysis. If you take into account that I love someone without knowing if the feeling is mutual, I run the risk of loving someone who does not love me back. If I do not ask the question, I run this risk.

If however I do ask this question I run the risk of knowing that s/he does not love me back. This possibility of pain in the future overshadows the pain of not knowing anything and thus this statement is difficult to "state".

For all those people in the world who do not tell their loved ones how loved they are, you should. This world needs more love in it.