I love you 80-40
When we are born, love is all we know. It is our first teacher, our first home, and the only thing we instinctively understand. Someone held us, cared for us, and through their love, we learned how to grow. Love shaped us, nurtured us, and gave us a foundation to stand on.
But as we grow older, life gets complicated. The world feels harsh, and sometimes we grow jaded. Little by little, we forget the simplicity and power of love. We begin to question it, to fear it, or to overlook it. And then, one day, something happens—a loss, a crisis, a moment of profound vulnerability—and we realize how lost we’ve become without it.
When I was little, my dad would ask me, “How much do you love me?” I’d stretch my arms as wide as I could and say, “This much!” Then I’d conjure up the biggest, grandest things my 5-year-old mind could imagine. “I love you to outer space and back!” or “I love you 300 dinosaurs!”
One day, though, when he asked, I blurted out, “I love you 80-40.” He paused, laughing a little, and asked, “What’s 80-40?” With the confidence only a burgeoning 6 year old could muster, I explained, “It’s the biggest number in the universe.”
I’ll never forget the look on his face—like I had just handed him the entire world. And it stuck. To this day, years after his passing, “I love you 80-40” is written in countless cards and notes. It’s still said with a smile between my family, my friends, and even their kids.
Love is like that. It doesn’t need to be measured. It doesn’t need to be complicated. It just needs to be present. When we are deeply loved—when someone sees us fully and still chooses us—we carry that love with us forever. It becomes part of who we are, even when we don’t realize it.
The world today feels heavy. It’s impossible to look around and not see how broken things are. People are being disappeared, families torn apart, rights stripped away. It feels as though cruelty and hate have taken up residence in places where love should be. It’s easy to become overwhelmed, to let anger and fear take root in our own hearts.
But the truth is, hate won’t heal us. Fighting darkness with more darkness will only leave us blind. I don’t believe it’s our job to love people back from their own evil—that’s a weight too heavy to carry. But it is our job to love each other more. To hold the people we care about closer. To create ripples of kindness and connection, no matter how small they seem.
At the core, I know love isn’t trivial. It’s not naïve. It’s not weak. Love is the only thing that has ever changed the world for the better. It starts in the smallest ways: in the warmth of a hug, the softness of a word, the unwavering belief that someone else matters. That ripple spreads outward in ways we’ll never fully see.
Maybe we can’t fix everything. Maybe we can’t heal the world overnight. But love isn’t about instant solutions—it’s about persistence. It’s about planting seeds, even when we don’t know when or where they’ll bloom.
So when the world feels like too much, I try to remember this: Love isn’t a luxury. It’s not an escape. It’s a rebellion. It’s an act of defiance in the face of hate and despair. Love is where we begin, and love is how we find our way home.
I love you 80-40,
Jen