In the past two days, I have seen Love Actually three times. It's a snow day thing, I guess, but everybody has been wanting to watch it. It's one of my favorite movies, so I can't say that bothers me much. If you've never seen it, I recommend at least watching the opening monologue. The whole premise of the film is that love actually is all around us, even if it doesn't feel that way when you look at the morning news or focus on how mundane day-to-day life sometimes gets. Each character is faced with their own challenge and their own love story, whether platonic, romantic, or familial. Each character experiences real growth and realizes what love means to them at Christmas time. The opening and closing scenes are both at the Heathrow Airport arrivals gate, and show all the different ways that love is shown at an arrivals gate.

I think that this is really the perfect message for Christmas, especially when I begin to think about all the people I love and how much of that love gets put back out into the world.

Last night in the very crowded snow day dining hall, I was enjoying the high of reflecting on this idea that love is all around us. My friends and I were struggling terribly to find a seat and had accepted a small little two-person table to be split four ways. A girl approached us and offered her booth. We didn't know her and she didn't know us, but she took it upon herself to offer a bit of kindness to us. We were gracious, and then noticed a group of girls without a table and offered that they could sit with us. And they did. And then when they were leaving, they offered that booth to another group of strangers.

It always strikes me how easy it is to spread the love. As is noted in Love Actually it's not always particularly dignified, but love can be shown by anyone at any time, and it can be all around us. It can be easy for us to get sucked into the dull nature of day-to-day life or to grow forgetful and complacent of the power we possess to change people's days, but I think that, particularly around Christmas, it is important that we remember these things and spread love to the best of our abilities.

Because Love, Actually is all around us.