Love is like the wind. You can’t see wind, but you know if it is there. You can't control it, but you can harness its energy. You know wind is there because you feel it. What happens around you tell you that the wind is there. Wind is difficult to understand. It varies in strength and intensity. At times, it disappears, and you wonder if it will ever come back. Wind can be dangerous when it is out of control, becoming destructive, hurting and harming anything it runs into.
Love, like the wind, is a force in life. You can’t see it directly. Yet, you feel it in your relationships with others. You see its results, in kindness, or acts of affection, but you can’t see love, itself. You can’t force love. If you use force to try to get love, you are bound to lose it. To love out of coercion, threats, or fear, is not love, but compliance. Threats may be subtle, not in words, but with behavior or gestures.
You can harness love’s energy when, and if, it occurs. You do this by loving back in an accepting, non-controlling way. Nobody owns anyone else through love. Love is a freeing not an entrapping emotion. Love involves accepting someone for what and who they are, not what you want them to be.
To love is to make a choice, an emotional commitment to someone else. This is great in one way, but dangerous in another way. The more you invest in something, the more upset you are if your investment is lost, and the more you convince yourself you have the right to it, regardless of what others think. Love can become possessive, changing into jealousy and suspicion. A jealous person is obsessed with another person, but seldom takes a good look at himself, and doesn’t recognize that his destructive feelings are created by his own fears and inadequacies.
To love is to make a choice, an emotional commitment to someone else. This is great in one way, but dangerous in another way. The more you invest in something, the more upset you are if your investment is lost, and the more you convince yourself you have the right to it, regardless of what others think. Love can become possessive, changing into jealousy and suspicion. A jealous person is obsessed with another person, but seldom takes a good look at himself, and doesn’t recognize that his destructive feelings are created by his own fears and inadequacies.
You harness love’s energy when you treat it right, when you give love the freedom to be, to exist in its unique and special way, not in the way that you believe it should or must be. You don’t control with love. You allow the other person to be himself.
You can’t create love. You can’t force it. Yet, you usually know when it is around. Love varies in intensity. Sometimes it is exciting. Other times it is calm and gentle. Recognize love in its many splendor forms. Avoid analyzing or chasing after it. Let it be, and enjoy it. Love may express itself in anger. A person may feel hurt and concerned, and their love and concern may come out as anger or rage. Love also has quiet times.
Valentines Day helps to focus on love and its importance in life. Love thrives when it is celebrated between people on a regular basis. You celebrate love when you give a loved one a hug, or say, "I like you", or go out of your way to do some little thing they appreciate, without their asking. Lovers develop their own personal ways of celebrating love and caring. Being the first to get up, leave your warm bed, and walking on a cold kitchen floor, to make a cup of coffee for your partner to have in bed, is an act of loving. Have you tried it recently? If not, think about it. After all, you can celebrate Valentines Day more than once a year if you want to, and in many, many ways.
-- PJ O'Rourke (1993)
