Love Connections

Valentine’s Day may be what some people call a “Hallmark Holiday” but love is always worth celebrating whether you embrace all of the commercial hoopla or just quietly light a candle, give a meaningful hug or tap out a telephone number to connect with a special person.

Love gives us hope.  Love makes us feel all tingly inside and helps our resilient hearts beat a little faster.  Love is exciting.

Love is also risky.  To find it is definitely a roll of the emotional dice and, depending on the person, you may want to immediately throw the dice.  Or as the Danish poet Kierkegaard wrote, “Without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk, the greater the faith.”

In my own life, I think of all the different kinds of love that I have been blessed — and thrilled — to experience and it helps to remind me to keep my heart open to receive more of it.  There have been many times when I have had my heart broken or trampled on and afterwards all I wanted to do was slam the door on my heart and protect it from ever again feeling ripped apart.

But I discovered the hard way that taking that attitude is not a healthy way to live.  If you truly keep your heart open and vulnerable to life’s unexpected experiences you will find that the ability to give love and receive love is the thing that really keeps you going.

I’m not saying that you have to throw yourself on to strangers or kiss everyone you know as though you will never see them again.  I’m talking about taking the energy of love and storing it in your heart so that you can live your life with a positive feeling of warmth towards others.

Keeping that ember of love within your heart helps you remember the potential and possibility of love.  Letting go and just jumping in there by getting out of your own world and being curious about others.  Remembering that the thing you do or say today may make a difference for someone else.

I have no special sweetheart to celebrate with today yet I feel the love of my friends and family and that is no small thing when I look around at the state of the world today.  Although romantic or sexual love is definitely the bomb, we don’t always have that in our lives when we need it or want it.  It’s hard to go without it but you never know what life will bring and that’s part of being open and aware of your journey.

We as human beings are hard wired to connect with others and when we aren’t able to connect on a personal level then life feels as though it is being lived in a limited, shallow way.  Putting ourselves out there to feel empathy for others, happiness for others, sadness for others is what brings depth and meaning to our lives.

Put another way, you get out of life what you put into it.

Here’s wishing you lots of love connections today and every day.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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