Love. A many splendored thing. A many confusing mystery.

Love. We want it. Need it. Fight for it. Fight against it. We resist. We retreat. We hide from it.

Love. We don’t believe in it. We don’t understand it. We don’t feel it.

Love.

A verb? A noun? An adjective? An any ‘thing’?

Love is all around. It is in everything. It is always the answer.

When we surrender to Love, we give up naming it, blaming it, hating it.

When we give into Love, we give into the essence of our humanity, the core of our humanness.

Love is.

We are.

Love.

Love is ever-present, ever abiding and always in the air.

All we have to do to know love, to be love, to have and to give love is to stop resisting, stop justifying, stop fighting our universal need to know and believe in Love.

Yesterday, was the annual day of love. Hearts and flowers, mushy quotes and pithy sayings abounded all over the universe. I Love You’s rolled off tongues and strut their stuff across the screens of hand-held devices and computer monitors.

In our collective frenzy to declare our Love for everyone and everything, we force-fed message streams and twitter feeds with assertions of undying, never-ending, always enduring Love.

So what’s the big deal? Why do we go love crazy on one day of the year when Love is all around every day of the year?

Like Christians long ago confessing their sins to buy their assured seat in Heaven before traipsing off to the Crusades, perhaps we confess our love on this one day of the year to atone for our lack of loving actions throughout the year.

Colour me jaded, but Valentine’s Day feels like a bit of a hoax. In its hyped up, gimme-gimme cravings for attention, Valentine’s Day has become a retailer’s delight of super-sized proportions. Love doesn’t cost a dime, yet, encouraging the consumer to buy, buy, buy has overridden the true cost of giving and receiving Love.

Love is free.

On the wall at the far end of our bedroom, just below the ceiling, there is a wooden plaque with the words, “Always kiss me goodnight,” written on it.

Lying in bed, it is the last thing I read before turning out the light, and the first thing I read in the morning.

Its placement is intentional.

No matter the temperature of our relationship, that sign is a reminder to always give way to Love. To not go to sleep angry. To not awaken with yesterday’s disagreements clouding our hearts.

Love is the answer.

In anger. Fear. Confusion. Hatred. Sorrow. Love is the answer.

Because no matter what else you may be feeling, no matter what other emotion may be clogging your heart’s ability to pump freely, Love is always present.

And it doesn’t need you to dig into your pocketbook on one day of the year to remind someone you love of its presence.

Perhaps though, it is our human fear that makes us want to spend our way into protesting our love everywhere. Perhaps it is that because we do so many things that are not loving, that are not a reflection of the core of our humanness, we need this day to remind us that we can put down our arms of war to reach out with arms filled with nothing but love for one another.

In doing it one day of the year, perhaps we remind ourselves that it is possible to make peace not war. To live in community not separation. To choose Love not fear.

Perhaps, the purpose for Valentine’s Day is to remind us all to stop, take a breath and remember, Love is all around.

I hope so. Because given the retailer’s need for boosting up in our sagging economy, I’m sure they appreciated all the Love this year.