Have a Happy Valentine’s Day

The Princess & the Dragon. Illustratiion by Marina WIld

There is an image of passionate love where two hearts touch like golden bells and resonate and send the singing dinging donging song of their passion out across the spheres of time and space. It is an apt description, for to fall in love is to live a moment in the timeless wondrous myths of our species: heart meets heart, soul embraces soul, all obstacles are overcome as two people begin the incredible adventure to who knows where.

But like all the great sagas, that of romantic passionate love is as strewn as any with dangers and pit falls and pathways guarded by trolls and dragons and the more wicked members of the fairy folk. Much of these impediments are of our own making, not least because it is scary suddenly becoming two and all that necessitates: compromises, changes, the intimate awareness that another person’s hope and dreams are now as much a part of your heart as your own.

Yet, in actual fact we have all of us been involved in the business of falling in love and resonating with others from the moment we were born and folded up into the embrace of our mother and father. Our new born heart, that little pebble sized muscle, resonated with love from the moment we took our first breath. As we grew our ability to feel love - and to wonder and to empathise - grew too, for our extended family, friends and pets. And as our capacity for love grew so too did our capacity to give love, to feel for others and share and exchange our tales of wonder and curiosity.

Love is hard wired into us. It is not limited by colour, ability, gender, sexuality, body shape, religion, ideology or whether you are tall with thinning hair or short with hair like a lion’s mane. Love is part of human nature. If falling in love seems a little scary and the journey ahead daunting, then perhaps it’s best to ignore the future, let the days ahead look after themselves, and instead enjoy the moment, live in the now, talk and listen, laugh and console, make silly faces and serious ones, play with love the way children play with twigs or stones.

Love can be anything we want it to be and with it we can do incredible things: we can be still and reflective or loud and whizzing about like super heroes, or - and perhaps this is the best of all - we can simply be totally idiotic with love.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Related articles:

Falling in Love, Staying romantic
To give and receive love...
The Princess and the Dragon
 How do I learn to love?
Telling someone you like them 

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