Thoughts on Valentine's Day
Valentine’s Day is a day for many to celebrate love. Although the origins of this holiday is a little murky, it’s one of the most popular and lucrative holidays in North America. Unfortunately not everyone feels the love on Valentines day. That’s partly because mass media’s depiction of love is lacking. Mass media love is a bit like fast food. It’s usually represented as “an intense emotionality combining physical attraction, possessiveness, control, addiction, eroticism and novelty.” It feels great, looks great, tastes great but it often lacks nutrition or substance. The “organic whole food” kind of Love is a state of being that all of us have the capacity of becoming but that many of us forgot. Although it’s nice to receive and give cards, flowers, chocolate, special dates on Valentine’s day, it's not necessary. So if you didn’t get something, don’t despair, you are still loved.
In his book Power vs. Force, Dr. David Hawkins describes Love as “a way of relating to the world that is forgiving, nurturing, and supportive. Love is not intellectual and does not proceed from the mind. Love emanates from the heart. It has the capacity to lift others and accomplish great feats because of its purity of motive. [...] Love focuses on the goodness of life in all its expressions and augment that which is positive. It dissolves negativity by recontextualizing it rather than attacking it.”
This is what Love is all about: It’s unconditional, it’s infinite, it’s self sustaining and it’s everywhere. We just need to pay attention to see it. That version of Love is worth celebrating not only on Valentine’s Day but every day. It’s something that I’m learning to reintegrate in my life in a more active way rather then in a passive way. Love is simple. It just is. It’s always there and it comes from within you and me, if we allow it to take over us. Everything else will fall into place when we do things with and out of Love. Love is not something that’s outside of you to find. Love is who you are at your core. It’s the most vulnerable and at the same time the strongest part of ourselves and it's capable of changing the world around us once we set it free.
Today is a great day to remember to look into ourselves and our actions : Are we withholding the Love that is within us or are we setting it free to emanate from our core and from our own actions? Today can be a New Valentine’s Day, a reminder not just to give items as a representation of Love but to constantly behave in a loving way with every action we take. I challenge you (and myself) to use Valentine’s Day as a reminder to let that Love inside of you radiate out of everything you do and affect everyone around you in a way that is unconditional, forgiving, nurturing, supportive and uplifting : to act with an open heart because the world need a lot more Love right now.
Happy New Valentines Day
