It is Valentine week, and as usual in the Western world we are bombarded with all sorts of commercial pressure to go out and spend a fortune to show the true merit of our love for someone.

I am guessing that this is now also the case in the rest of the world, as the developing world clamours to catch up with the “enlightened” ways of the West 🙂

I find it amusing to see so many people rushing around to prove their true love for that “special” person in their life.

To me, love has been commercialised to the extent that we have forgotten just what love means anymore.

Just what is love?

How do you find the “special” one?

And once you have found the special one, how do make your relationship even better?

Also, if you are single like millions of people today, how do you enjoy life as a single person?

I shall be writing a series of 4 articles in the next 2 days with some of my answers. But just what is Love?

To me, love is the most amazing thing in our lives. It is what makes us human, what makes life worth living. Nothing else truly matters. The size of our homes, bank balances, the beauty of our partner, the speed of our car – all those things pale into insignificance when we face the splendour of what it is that makes us tick.

Love does not make the world go around – it simply makes the ride worthwhile.

Love is NOT the highly commercialised circus we see on Valentines Day. It is much deeper and much more profound than sending someone a dozen roses at hugely inflated prices. It is much more than candle lit dinners and fancy chocolates.

The commercialism of love has now gone so far that people are made to feel inadequate if they are on their own on Valentine’s Day.

Here in the West, we have forgotten how wonderful it can be to just love someone for who they are and to accept them. There is always a catch – a kind of tit for tat. We have forgotten to love ourselves. We hold grievances against others for supposed petty hurts and forget their magnificence.

Yet we all yearn for that deep connection with others, those moments of bliss, joy, completeness. We crave to have more of those delicious moments we may have had with a romantic partner. Such moments seem so rare and forlorn.

We all remember the blissful moments when strangers have shared their love and made a difference. Check out this wonderful story from Wayne Dwyer about Valentine’s Day and selfless giving.

We all remember the feeling of gratitude in the eyes of someone whom we have helped. We remember how great it feels to do something for someone without expecting anything in return.

We cry when we see happy stories on our TV screens of families reuniting. Such stories touch our hearts and yet they are so rare, as we continue to get bombarded with so much doom and gloom by all the propaganda around us.

We remember the sheer joy of children playing and the love in their eyes. Our hearts skip a beat, we get goose pimples and we get teary eyed when we witness an act of sheer love, pure, unadulterated and unconditional. Such moments literally take our breath away.

Love is much greater than what we feel romantically. It is what makes us sing, dance and makes us human.

I always wonder why there is so much pain in the world. The world today is just not working – our tried and tested methods have failed. We need to review our core values and to see just where we are headed.

If there was enough love in the world, we would simply not tolerate a single human being starving. As Gandhi said – “There is enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed“.

However, there is enough love in each of our hearts to heal the world. We have simply forgotten this as we all strive to get bigger, better and to get somewhere. But usually when we get there and have these things, we find forlorn emptiness.

Yet there is a better way. Open your heart to what is possible.

There are so many simple things we can all do on a daily basis to bring more love into our lives. Together we can all make this an even better and more beautiful world than it already is.

What have you got to lose? Except perhaps your fear of being hurt, let down, taken advantage of?

Once you became aware of the miracles that love can produce you will want more of the same. Your situation will change, people around you will change and you will change. You will become human again.

Let us use the occasion of Valentine’s Day for us all to become human again together, and manifest even more love in our already magnificent world.

A world of love, love and love always – after all, nothing else matters.

And look for the love within you and in front of you rather than elsewhere.

To end, here is a quote from an unknown source:-

“Love doesn’t leave you but you leave love”

We all have relationships in our life which can be improved. Often it only takes one person to bring more love and caring into that relationship.

Where in your relationships can you bring more love today?