In the song, Alicia Keys tries to explain the sentiment behind what it’s like to exist in a marriage that is overflowing with love and how she wants to teach her young son how to love another woman the way her husband loves her.

Alicia uses descriptive imagery and metaphorical speech to describe the depth of
how she perceives and experiences love.

To Alicia, Love is not just an emotion you experience but in fact, it’s a lifestyle that she believes everybody should live especially in today’s world.

In Western Societies today, the definition of character traits such as independence and strength is glorified while portraying their opposites, dependency, and vulnerability, as something to be avoided and belittled.

While being admirable characteristics, the song is meant to explore the entire spectrum of these traits to emphasize qualities such as vulnerability and dependency not as something negative but instead as a way of truly experiencing the world deeply and intimately without lacking in any virtue of character.

Alicia finally asks the listener that if they understood the depth of the message to show her their hands, thereby indicating that not only did they understand her message, but actually live it as well and whether perhaps they could show her just exactly how she could teach these lessons to her son.