I recently had a chance to go to two different events, although opposite in spectrum, at the end of the day they were really about the same thing, honoring and celebrating what you love and expressing how you feel about them. The first occasion I attended was a wedding; obviously, a day of celebration, a day to tell your new bride how much you love her, to tell your friends and family, and new family how much you love them, and a day to thank all of those who helped you get to this great day. All of the emotions were appropriate for a wedding, all of the emotions and love I am more than sure were sincere. All in all it was a great day filled with love and happiness as it should be. A few days later I unfortunately had to attend a funeral, a day that was not so happy, but in its own way a celebration none the less. It celebrated a life, and like the wedding there was an outpouring of emotion for this person, for all that he had done, for all that he had meant to his wife, children, nieces and nephews, friends and coworkers. And for all the differences in the emotions of these two days the similarities struck me even more. At the end of the day both events gave people a chance to express how they felt about someone or someone’s they loved.

After the funeral I started to wonder how often people really told the people they care about in their life how much they mean to them. I decided to run an experiment in my own life, I was going to show the people that mattered to me the most how much I cared. Now, I wasn’t going to run right home after the funeral and express to everyone my love for them, that is too obvious and too easy. Over the next few months I set a deliberate plan to let the people I care about know at the most inopportune times for me, how much I loved them. My first test was my wife, I had a day where I was particularly overwhelmed at work, made a huge mistake on a project I was working on, and felt that I had let all of my coworkers down. All I wanted to do was go home, have a drink, be left alone and sit and watch TV. Instead, I called my wife told her to get a babysitter, brought her flowers, made reservations at her favorite restaurant, and spent the entire evening letting her know I loved her, I appreciated the amazing job she was doing raising our children, admired the type of friend she was, and let her know just how lucky I felt. The evening was all about her, and for no particular reason.

Each time I felt down, for whatever reason, I repeated the same type of thing, with my children, my parents, my in laws and even coworkers. Whenever I felt overwhelmed or depressed about something I went out of my way to make someone I cared about feel special. The result? You can’t imagine the difference it made in my life. Not only did it take away my immediate unhappiness by giving to someone else, it made me a much happier person on a day to day basis. There is something incredibly freeing about letting the people you care about know it, and letting them know for no particular reason, no wedding, no funeral, no college graduation, just because. I am sure I made all of those people happy on the days I made the effort, I could see it in their eyes, I knew by the way they treated me afterward. But, however I made them feel, I promise I did not make them near as happy as I made myself by expressing my feelings. The old cliche it is better to give than to receive is never more true when expressing your feelings to the people you care about most.Give it a try, give to the people you care about when it seems the most difficult, and watch the difference in your own life.