100% on Valentine’s Day
Being whole and finding love everywhere
The photo shows a person forming a traditional heart symbol with their hands outdoors so the sun itself seems to shine through. Photo by Aziz Acharki at Unsplash.
This week is an opportunity to contemplate love, given that it is Valentine’s Day, the “love” holiday this week. It got me thinking of a funny Valentine’s Day story: I took a class called “Marriage” in high school. Yes, it is true!
I took a Marriage Class
It was an all-girls Catholic school, and the teachers had good intentions. There were “lay” teachers who were not nuns or priests, and, for this one presentation for Marriage class, the teacher brought her spouse in to help her make a presentation around Valentine's Day. Looking back, I'm surprised that valuable class time was dedicated to a class called "marriage." I wonder if I took the class hoping to crack the code on marriage or to increase the chances that I would marry. Being socialized as a female is complicated, and things like my school having a marriage class may have come from a desire to prepare us to fulfill societal expectations. Women can be put under a lot of pressure this way, and these things can go unquestioned by both men and women for generations. I don’t think my brothers, one of whom attended an all-boys Catholic school, had a marriage class. But, all things considered, the marriage class I took did focus on emotional intelligence and honest communication, so it wasn't all bad.
I remember the teacher and her spouse teamed up to give us some interesting advice. They said that marriage isn't a 50/50 endeavor. Instead, you give 100% and expect 100% from your partner. Also, you don't fall in love; you choose to be in love every day. This means making conscious decisions and choices with your spouse at any given moment, especially in the ordinary everyday interactions where love gets expressed.
A discussion followed about being a whole person, not just a half. You do your part, but your role may change as you grow. Societal roles are just suggestions; in a relationship, you constantly make small decisions and embody the highest wisdom you know. It takes commitment.
My takeaway from this experience is that you are whole on your own. After years of experience, I have this to add, which is that love needs wisdom. Love is wonderful, but it does need wisdom as a sort of “bodyguard” that watches and observes things and guards the wholeness that you are. The wisdom is the willingness to be thoughtful and responsible about love in all things. Love without wisdom is wishy-washy and maybe even reckless in that, without wisdom, love can make you agree to things and even do things that aren’t good for you or for others without even realizing it. Thankfully, you can bring the light of awareness to all of it. The light of awareness is a sort of guradian for these things. True love is always about wholeness and being conscious of the whole.
Being Whole on Your Own
So, on this love holiday, I want to offer the idea of being whole on your own. You are 100% just as you are, and love is the thing you can bring with you wherever you go—into your actions and interactions, no matter how ordinary. This way, love can be something you intend and bring forth. It also means that you may have to work on it and yourself in order to clarify your values and intent and get good a expressing these values in all that you do. It is something you can practice.
A blessing we gave one another after one particular training at the Gottman Institute is: “May you love well!” To which the response is, “Yes, I will practice!”
Loving Well
Loving well means you are a love witness and love agent, a person who seeks to express love and who recognizes love when they see it and experience it. It means you don’t concern yourself about the love you are not getting or the love you had before but seem to have lost, but instead concern yourself with love as an energy that is everywhere waiting to be animated and recognized by you. Making the bed? Yes, make the bed with love for the one who sleeps in it, so the bed is smooth and invites deep and healing rest. Brewing tea? Go slowly so you don’t make a mess and forget the leaves are brewing. But be sure to then savor the tea and look out the window as you sip in the goodness. Lifting weights or doing your Tai Chi practice? Bring your heart to it and do your best. Working in the garden, pulling weeds and making it beautiful? Don’t forget to get up and take little breaks to stretch your back every now and then, so you don’t get cranky and stiff. If you think of love this way, then love becomes something that you see and find everywhere, especially within yourself. The purest and barest form of love is attention. Remember you are in charge of where your attention goes. That moment of directing your awareness to yourself and what you are doing or to whatever the world is “doing” can be an act of love! Directing attention like this is an act of being whole and recognizing the great play of energy (and love) that is always dawning in the heart and potentially taking expression in the world.
Happy Valentine’s Day!