Disregarding who Valentine was, how he became a saint and how he has come to represent romantic love, this blogger wants to take advantage of this day, as commercialized, to express a time-wasting, secular comment on the love that he neither comprehends nor has allowed himself to experience.
Enduring romantic love, he imagines, is not an annual celebration but a life-long, continuous affair. It is not an obligation to attend to or an expectation to be fulfilled; rather, it is an unfinished yearning that begins on the day two individuals of the opposite sex meet with a mutual unspoken desire to create a union that becomes a bond that strengthens when the relationship is being tested, when it is nearly impossible to hold together, when both sides reach out to each other, with hand in hand, like on that first date, with abiding love in their hearts, knowing that there is nothing that is unconquerable when they are together.
The reality, unfortunately, is not nearly as perfect as dreamed, and one ought to ask why. One can point to choice, or to fate, both of which are plausible reasons. One also cannot underestimate the power of desire which too often breaks the promise of fidelity, or the weakness of the will which almost always succumbs to the pains of the heart.
Thus, is the bond of love so fragile that not even an annual reminder on St. Valentine's Day is enough to keep it from coming apart?
Perhaps not, not if the two individuals once joined together by love are each willing to accept one's own weaknesses with sufficient humility to ask for forgiveness and to embrace the other person's weaknesses with sufficient compassion to grant forgiveness. In doing so, it is not an exercise using a scale of justice, for love is not an object that can be counted, measured or otherwise quantified and weighed: love is a living organism that needs to be nurtured and protected in order to survive and flourish.
Happy Valentine's Day!
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