Happy love day to one and all, don't feel the pressure to love, or be loved perfectly today.

Hello to all my daily musings friends. You know I love you, but today I send you extra love, on this, Hallmark, man made holiday for love. I hope wherever you are, whatever you’re doing you are celebrating your most important love affair of all. The one you should be having with yourself. We all know that love begins from inside, and the person we owe the most honor and love to, is ourselves.

I don’t know about all of you, but I’ve never been a fan of today, for me it just felt forced, contrived, silly. Even from when I was a small child in elementary school I didn’t like it. Maybe it was because I recall everybody counting up their Valentine’s Day cards to see who got the most. I never won, not once. But that’s not what bothered me about the holiday. What bothered me about it, as I got older, was how it managed to make me into this high expectation monster. Like all of a sudden my inner monologue of what I hoped my lover could telepathically get from me, in order to provide exactly how I wanted the day to go like, was on hyper drive. Like dinner alone just wouldn’t be good enough; I mean for fucks sake it is VALENTINE’S day. Don’t get me jewelry though, cuz that’s TOO MUCH. But don’t only get me flowers, with no dinner. And on, and on, and on, the inner expectation conversation went. It was gross. I hated who I was on Valentine’s Day, so it was with great pleasure, and relief when Yannick and I decided, years ago, to let go of this manufactured day of love, and instead celebrate the anniversary of our first date, which is February 27th. Now this makes much more sense to me/us, since it is OUR day. And celebrating it means something special to us since it’s the first time we went out with one another, and the last time we left one anothers side. Plus, it’s way easier to get a reservation at any of our favorite restaurants by shifting our day of love to the 27th. Long gone is the pressure to give love, receive love, all perfectly. The get it just right, or else expectations are also done; well at least for February 14th, but there are so many other special occasions to apply this pressure to!!

I kid, I kid!! Truthfully I hope that wherever you are, and whomever you’re doing today with, same sex, different race, or religious background to yours, I pray that you’re having a blissful time with your person! And if like me, you’re just doing you today, enjoy that too. Before I leave you for the day, I want to share a few of my favourite quotes about love to get you in the mood, just in case like me you’re not a fan of today ; )

RUMI: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

“I want to see you. Know your voice. Recognize you when you first come ’round the corner. Sense your scent when I come into a room you’ve just left. Know the lift of your heel, the glide of your foot. Become familiar with the way you purse your lips then let them part, just the slightest bit, when I lean in to your space and kiss you. I want to know the joy of how you whisper ‘more.’”

HELEN KELLER: “The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.”

ANGELITA LIM: “I saw that you were perfect, and so I loved you. Then I saw that you were not perfect and I loved you even more.”

And the verse that we were married to, and included in our wedding gifts…

1 CORINTHIANS 13:4-7

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
May you all love yourself first in this way, and then whomever else is blessed to have your love, love them like this too.