“Cupid, draw back your bow and let your arrow go…straight to my lover’s heart for me.” (Sam Cooke 1961, for those of you who didn’t grow up in the ‘60s).

The Alaskan Inuits have 52 words for snow… it’s that important. I think we need something like that for love.

When I went through a particularly angst-ridden period in the ’80s I played this song over and over, and over––“I Want to Know What Love Is.” Years have gone by and I’ve gotten a few ideas. (Thank you therapists, books, personal experiences.) Love is letting go of fear. Love is that your happiness is essential to mine. Love is devotion. Love is getting outside of self. Love is an emotion and an action.

FEBRUARY 14- THE BIG LOVE DAY. Hold on there, you don’t have to have a sweetheart to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

If, as I have read, a love relationship is a state of being connected and caring, there are dozens of ways this can happen, with varying levels of devotion, like, and love. Kinship, blood, marriage, work, colleague, boss, sibling, friendship, activity, cause, parent/child, sexual, love, romance.

My idea of love and celebrating Valentine’s Day is an inclusionary concept. I want to sweep in all the people, places, and things I’ve said I love. That ranges from loving sweet potatoes, to Gone with the Wind (both book and movie), reading (what a delightful escape), the beach, mountains, other beautiful places in nature, my dancing, hiking, writing and storytelling friends, my friends of history, loving memories of people who have died, my family, my life partner. I’m connected to all of them in some way, with varying degrees of emotions. You can love a lot of different ways.

A PICTORIAL ESSAY ON LOVE

Everybody loves something, even if it’s just tortillas. ~ Trungpa Rinpoche

Ya gotta learn to laugh. It’s the way to true love. ~ John Travolta in Michael

If lots more of us loved each other, we’d solve lots more problems. And then the world would be a gasser. ~ Louis Armstrong

I love you not only for what you are but for what I am when I am with you…

I love you for the part of me that you bring out… I love you for ignoring the possibilities of the fool and weakling in me, and for laying firm hold of the possibilities of good in me… You have done it all by being yourself. ~ Ray Croft

It was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together… and I knew it. ~ Tom Hanks, Sleepless In Seattle

 

 

 

 

Zing went the strings of my heart. ~ James Hanley. 1934 song

 

 

 

Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future. ~ Gail Lumet Buckley

 

 

 

Love is an excess of friendship. ~ Aristotle

 

 

 

 

 

Too much of a good thing is wonderful. ~ Mae West

 

HAPPY  VALENTINE’S DAY!