Happy Valentine's Day

I'm up this early because I hastily ate my pizza last night and burned my mouth. After tossing and turning and rinsing my mouth with mouthwash to quell the irritation, I decided to just log on and post something.

And what do you know, it's Valentine's Day! I have always had a love/hate (okay I'm being punny early...) relationship with this holiday. I like red, I like chocolate, I own heart-shaped cake pans, but I have always felt a bit odd about this holiday. Why? Because the darned Hallmark (and florist and other industry) people always make you feel like you have to a) buy something and b) have some burning love interest (read sexual undertones) for this holiday to be worth something. So while, in my heart of hearts (yes, punny again), I'm very anti-Valentine's Day, I think if we only look at these two aspects of the day, we're missing something.

I searched for meaning for Valentine's Day and I found a religious explanation here at newadvent.org and a secular one here at history.com. There's even a nice breakdown of the Greek concept of love on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

On another note, since I'm never satisfied with just finding facts, I dug into the old memory bank to see just how many songs are there about "love" anyway. A little searching on google turned up a whole lot! (Results 1 - 10 of about 3,170,000 for songs with love in the title. (0.10 seconds).

Alas, once the old memory bank started getting warmed up with a couple of shots of espresso and google, I found one of my old favorite songs from the 1980s, that's a little different.

What is love, anyway? by Howard Jones (1984)

This is a repetitive song in many places, basically so it could work with the catchy techno melody, but upon examination, you'll see some of the lyrics are very meaningful in the context of today. A couple of my favorites are below, which are applicable even if you don't fit the mold of this Hallmark holiday:

I love you even if you think that I don't.
Sometimes I find you doubt my love for you but I don't mind.
Why should I mind? Why should I mind?

And later on in the song, we hear this:

And maybe love is letting people be just what they want to be
The door always must be left unlocked.
To love when circumstance may lead someone away from you
And not to spend the time just doubting.

Finally, since I've uncovered all this "love" on the 'net, I'm going to leave you now, to get ready to spread the "love" all day--in my work and with my family (Bubba can't wait to take his treats to school and Hubby will come have lunch with me today on the floor). It may not be Hallmark-ready, but it will be happy.

Go out and share some love today, too, in all you do. More next time...