Valentine’s Day

 

 

Why is Valentine’s Day such a popular holiday?  (& why is it a holiday AT ALL?)

 

No doubt – the people who have learned how to make money from holidays   have promoted it.  But there’s more to its popularity than that, surely.

 

It’s a rather unusual holiday, don’t you think?  In the way that Halloween is peculiar.  Mmm?

Halloween is our only holiday which celebrates (& validates) darkness / (evil).

Valentine’s Day, though, celebrates Love.  Love ITSELF.  Especially romantic love.

 

Even though it’s mainly romantic love that’s being celebrated, and even though our notions about the nature of romantic love are deeply flawed / (inaccurate), I still feel it’s a good sign.

I mean – that we have the good sense to regard Love as being really important – suggests (I think) – that we’re not completely crazy.

(One needn’t look hard, or look far these days to see plenty of craziness.)

 

Our Valentine’s Day is a good sign.

 

We now know that loneliness is as bad for our health & well-being as heavy smoking is   or obesity.

 

While we are unaccustomed to regarding loneliness as particularly important, it is not difficult to appreciate that the (enormous & world-wide) industries of 

 

     Slavery / (the international sex trade)

     Prostitution

     Pornography

     Weight-loss

     Beauty

     Fashion

     Dating (now mostly online)

 

– – that these are all substantially driven by loneliness.   Mmm?   Are they not?

 

These are all manifestations of the fact that the Human Condition (in general) and human Loneliness (in particular) is rather more than we can handle.

 

So –

 

Looking to Love as a solution of our suffering

Strikes me as being rooted in good intuition, or maybe even wisdom!

 

Rumi says –

 

Someone who does not run

toward the allure of love

walks a road where nothing

lives.  But this dove here

senses the love hawk floating

above, and waits, and will not

be driven or scared to safety

 

Rumi is telling us that 

if we are not living a life organized around LOVE (or at least moving toward it)

that we might as well be dead.  Or maybe even – that we are already dead.

 

Paul in his “Hymn to Love” (in a letter to the church in Corinth) tells us something quite similar:

 

If I speak all tongues of men and of angels, but speak without love, I am no more than a noisy gong or clanging cymbal. If I can prophesy and fathom all mysteries and knowledge and if I have so much faith that I can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all my possessions to the poor, or even give my body to be burnt, but have not love, I gain nothing.

 

So –

 

If love is the only thing which makes life worth living, then it’s quite a marvel (don’t you think?) that we spend so little effort toward coming into right relationship with it!

 

About a decade ago I realized that I was so lonely that I was at risk.  I felt I was near the edge of insanity.  I therefore set out to find a life partner.

I began online dating.  Locally at first.  But after about half a year with that – came to the realization that what I was doing was NOT going to take me anywhere I really wanted to go.

So I began corresponding with Slavic women.  (I had spent a year, when in the Navy, studying the Russian language, and had sometimes wondered if maybe I had a sweetheart ‘over there’, somewhere, on the opposite side of the world)

Well, I am still doing this (corresponding with Slavic women); and I wish I could report that I have succeeded in my efforts; but that would be an overstatement.  However, I can certainly claim to have learned some things.

One thing I know for sure is – that I have been deceived (by women, online) no fewer than five times.  (Quite possibly more … but five, at least)

 

But, you know what I found out?  I learned that – even when I am being scammed – I might GROW.  Even if what was happening wasn’t real for her, it was still real for me!

 

I’ve learned a couple things –

 

     The inner (psychic / spiritual) realm is PRIMARY.

     &

     Whatever I attain there cannot be taken from me.

 

Let’s have a look at some of the aspects of LOVE –

 

WE LOVE PEOPLE FOR WHO THEY ARE.

  

True (actual) love is really quite simple.  And it is not selfish.

We do not love people for how they FEEL, or for what we may get from them.  (Such things happen, of course, but we should resist the temptation to categorize them as ‘Love’.  

‘Trading’ perhaps.  ‘Commerce’ maybe.  ‘Need’ maybe.   But not love.)

 

Desire (in itself) is not an attainment.  Loneliness (in itself) is not an achievement.

But the ability to be aware of one’s emotions … and the willingness to suffer through them – 

these skills are not trivial, and are worth celebrating.  Worth being glad about.

 

When I am able to foster within myself (my own heart, my own psyche) – the ability to feel real (unselfish) love for another person, and commitment to their well-being, growth, & happiness … this is an achievement. 

Even if the other (the one I am loving) should prove false … what I have attained cannot be taken from me.

 

 

Happy Valentine’s Day

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Hymn to Love

 

And now I will show you the best Way of all.

 

If I speak all tongues of men and of angels, but speak without love, I am no more than a noisy gong or clanging cymbal. If I can prophesy and fathom all mysteries and knowledge and if I have so much faith that I can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all my possessions to the poor, or even give my body to be burnt, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude. It does not insist on its own way. It does not take offense, nor does it keep a record of wrongs. Love does not enjoy evildoing but enjoys the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.

 

Love never ends. Prophecy will cease. Tongues will be stilled. Knowledge will fail. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the Fulfillment comes, the partial will be done away with. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I saw as a child, I thought and reasoned as a child. When I became a man, I put away the things of a child. Now all we can see of God is like a cloudy picture in a mirror, but then we shall see him face to face. I do not know everything now, but then I will, just as God completely understands me.

 

In a word, there are three things that last forever: faith, hope, and love: but the greatest of them all is love.

 

                                                             Paul of Tarsus /  1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13