I love my new computer. It’s so sexy. Thin, silver and streamline, virgin of oily fingertips. When I turned it on, the deep-voiced activated faceless person behind metallic metal whispered, “Just sit back and relax,” during setup. I laughed so hard. Thank goodness I wasn’t in a public place. What the hell did I just buy?

It gets even funnier. The model is called Envy.

Interestingly enough, I was reading a book that had a passage on love. People have come accustomed to overuse the word love and associating it with practically everything.

When we greet people, it’s common to let someone know we love their shirt if it happens to have a print, color, or style that catches our eye. Or we say, “Oh, I love your hair!”

Do we really love a dead hair follicle?

We may like someone’s sense of style or the way they chose to wear their hair that particular day or how it was cut by their favorite barber, but I don’t think love was intended for inanimate objects.

Love is an emotion geared toward sentiment, or a connection. We may grow to love how our partner remembers to tell the server to put the ranch on the side because they know it’s our favorite. Maybe it’s leaving notes around the house or you find one in your briefcase for no other reason than that your person wishes you well even more than themselves.

I used to believe in the phrase, “falling in love.” Do we really fall? Is it a downward movement? Or is it something that builds over time with trust and honesty, respect, and selflessness?

Love, like a potted peony, we must nurture it for it to grow.

For now, I must part ways and allow my fingers to tippity tap on my new computer in which I like – a lot – at least until it heats up and its think tank sputters just as its predecessor.

Do you really love your neighbor’s fence post?