I like you because...

Foreign English teaching has it's enlightening moments. This time, it came in the form of a song I sing with my elementary schoolers. It's called the 'I like you Song.' It contains a long list of the reasons why, 'I like you'. The funny thing is that in Japanese, people never tell one another they love each other. They say 'daisuke' which means roughly 'like a lot' or 'love' in the 'I love ice cream' kind of way. Using the word 'love' on a regular basis is just too personal, even among boyfriend and girlfriend or husband and wife. I partially interpret this song to be a bit romantic because of this AND because in the version we sing, it's a duet between a boy and a girl.

First of all, she lists the reasons she likes him. He's kind, smart, strong, and funny. Then he replies with his own list: she's tall, cute, quiet (??), and brave. She replies again with more things, 'I like you because you run so fast...swim so far...sing so well...smile a lot.' I'm pretty sure there's another verse but I can't remember it. I like this song because I think it's cute, but everytime I sing it it makes me think about why we make friends, become boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife. It makes me think about liking and loving. These are obviously all reasons people find valid for liking another person. And yet my mind wanders to the recent film Valentines Day, and the infamous Taylor and Taylor (in character) citing their reasons for 'being in love': she's so beautiful, he's so athletic. While these reasons look shallow and naive in the film, in reality, they would come up on 'I like you because' lists if we had such things.

I WANT to seperate reasons for loving into primary reasons and secondary reasons. The primary being the REAL reasons we love or fall in love and the secondary being the ones that get tacked on as extra bonuses. Of the primary I would expect things like, you're kind, you're honest, you're a good person. Of the secondary, you're beautiful, you're funny, you run so fast. And yet oddly enough, people are generally attracted to one another based on the secondary reasons. How many people would go on a date because the other person was honest? In fact, a lot of people would say that these lists should be switched. Or better yet, that the dating pool should begin with people who fit the primary reasons and then the picking should take place based on the secondary. In fact, I think there are a lot of people who would say that it would be impossible for them to fall in love with someone who failed to have at least one of their secondary criteria. People have to have things in common, right?

Personally, I WANT people to fall in love for the right reasons. I want good people to find love regardless or beauty, weight, intelligence level, or athletic ability. But I myself never worked outside of these parameters when I was scoping out potential boyfriends (I could give examples, but would rather not...).

Sometimes I write blogs because I'm not sure what to think about something and I want to flesh it out. I often feel pressured to come up with some poignant ending, but this time I'm going to leave it open ended. I'll finish with a Meghan Young-like question of the day: What do you think is a valid reason for loving/falling in love? Do you think there are any shallow reasons?

Thanks for reading, y'all.