In a few minutes I hear the same phrase in three languages. In the bar where I sip a vino, a voice message disturbs the silence. The few parishioners looked up from the newspaper when we heard it, finished off by a strident “I love you very much.” Already on the street, I catch a mother dragging a child and with her other hand holding her cell phone to proclaim with the enthusiasm of a union leader “t'estimo molt”. On three corners, two teenagers say goodbye with great fuss and some melodic “love you” back and forth. So much love verbalized in the middle of December overwhelms me. Is it the fault of climate change?
I remember, just before the pandemic, I had to call on the old magic of Twitter to solve the polyamorous tendency on my computer. Every time I typed the letters tem- the predictive keyboard completed “T’estimo molt.” With emails and with the Twitter or WhatsApp applications. If I realized it too late, I was forced to write a rectification without a word. The last straw was a tense email due to a conflict with an insurance company. I didn't realize that a keyed theme mutated into an extemporaneous t'estimo molt. It turned out that the operating system in Catalan already came – I saw it in the Keyboard subfolder of the Preferences – with three shortcuts that replaced pq with perquè and TEM or TM with T’estimo molt.
The educational emphasis, in principle reasonable, on the importance of verbalizing emotions can also cause flooding after years of persistent drought. In words of love, as in swear words, repetition cheapens the message. It trivializes it. The title popularized by Montserrat Roig Tell me that you love me even if it's a lie could have a second part titled Don't tell me so much that you love me even if it's true.
