Tag Archives: Valentine’s Day

The Awkward Truth About Valentine’s Day

Ah.  Valentine’s Day.

< awkward groan >

Look, I could write a heartfelt, academic post about this, considering all the research I did into it all, but I’m not feeling it.

So instead, I’ll just write what is awkward and at my core.

Y’see, Love is one of my Core Desired Feelings.

Yes.  I know.

It’s not so much because I’m a romantic at heart (romcoms and chick lit are torture for me!), but rather because it is one of the most transformative feelings that I have.

It literally changes everything in my life – not just how I feel, but also how I act, and how I perceive my life and my world.

It allows me to sit here and be entirely who and what I am.  It’s an expanding feeling that lets me ease into my space to begin with.  It allows me to approach people and life like a blank sheet – no prejudices, no stories, no attachments, just entirely open to what is.

It’s a kind of Freedom.

But don’t get me wrong.

I can’t and don’t feel like this 24/7, because I am human after all.  I react to my surroundings – people, landscape, news, books…- and I have other Core Desired Feelings that I want to feel (like Hope, and Dynamic).

And seriously, I can only imagine how smug and rose-tinted this all sounds.

It’s really difficult for me to write about this.  It’s so much easier for me to write about all the research I’ve done, and keep what I’m really feeling and experiencing at the periphery, at a distance.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth about Valentine’s Day:

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On the Looming Valentine’s Day and Loving Yourself

Ah.  Valentine’s Day is looming on the horizon.  It’s gotta be the second most emotionally charged day in the year (after Christmas, of course!).  As much as it tries somehow to promote love through the violent death of St Valentine (…and fatten corporate profits after the post-Christmas slump…), it tends to create an equal force of loathing to balance out the fuzziness.  It’s the Ying-Yang balance personified in a single annual date.

Me?  I’m going with my other half to the Carole Nash Motorbike Show at Excel in London on Valentine’s Day to drool over sexy metal over at the MV Agusta and KTM stands.  Getting hot and sweaty over fierce machines makes great foreplay.  Well, for us, at any rate.

Ahhhhh…romance.

ANYWAYS!

I actually want to make a slightly more serious point today about the Big L-word:

Sarah Cooper, a lovely friend of mine has been thinking over something recently that is often banded about by various wellness and self-help circles:

“You can only love someone as much as you love yourself”.

Supposedly.

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