St. Valentine - The father of LOVE

St. Valentine's Story

Let me introduce myself. My name is Valentine. I lived in Rome during the third century. That was long, long ago! At that time, Rome was ruled by an emperor named Claudius. I didn't like Emperor Claudius, and I wasn't the only one! A lot of people shared my feelings.
Claudius wanted to have a big army. He expected men to volunteer to join. Many men just did not want to fight in wars. They did not want to leave their wives and families. As you might have guessed, not many men signed up. This made Claudius furious. So what happened? He had a crazy idea. He thought that if men were not married, they would not mind joining the army. So Claudius decided not to allow any more marriages. Young people thought his new law was cruel. I thought it was preposterous! I certainly wasn't going to support that law!
Did I mention that I was a priest? One of my favorite activities was to marry couples. Even after Emperor Claudius passed his law, I kept on performing marriage ceremonies -- secretly, of course. It was really quite exciting. Imagine a small candlelit room with only the bride and groom and myself. We would whisper the words of the ceremony, listening all the while for the steps of soldiers.
One night, we did hear footsteps. It was scary! Thank goodness the couple I was marrying escaped in time. I was caught. (Not quite as light on my feet as I used to be, I guess.) I was thrown in jail and told that my punishment was death.
I tried to stay cheerful. And do you know what? Wonderful things happened. Many young people came to the jail to visit me. They threw flowers and notes up to my window. They wanted me to know that they, too, believed in love.
One of these young people was the daughter of the prison guard. Her father allowed her to visit me in the cell. Sometimes we would sit and talk for hours. She helped me to keep my spirits up. She agreed that I did the right thing by ignoring the Emperor and going ahead with the secret marriages. On the day I was to die, I left my friend a little note thanking her for her friendship and loyalty. I signed it, "Love from your Valentine."
I believe that note started the custom of exchanging love messages on Valentine's Day. It was written on the day I died, February 14, 269 A.D. Now, every year on this day, people remember. But most importantly, they think about love and friendship. And when they think of Emperor Claudius, they remember how he tried to stand in the way of love, and they laugh -- because they know that love can't be beaten!
Love is truly the best!!!

Learn to recognize what is love and what is something else

Learn to recognize what is love and what is something else. Some people confuse love with feelings of lust (e.g., purely sexual interest), ownership or control (e.g., co-dependency or manipulative motivators), worry (e.g., over-involved parenting or a spouse always checking up), neediness (e.g., insecurity or low self-esteem) and so forth. Yet, love is only possible when you don't need others to define who you are or need others to conform to your view of the world. Love isn't a tool for using people or binding them to your side; if you find yourself calling such actions "love", then it isn't love.

Acknowledge the breadth of love. Love isn't simply about romance––to define it so narrowly is to deprive yourself of the beauty and full extent of love. Love is a feeling, drive or emotion that we experience in association with people, pursuits and nature, and love can be found in many places, situations and relationships.

Begin by loving yourself. You can only truly love another being when you love yourself properly. Otherwise, you risk spending a lot of your life projecting inner hurts, pain and other negative emotions onto other people, seeing the worst in them so as to avoid facing it inside yourself. Loving yourself is not about putting yourself before others––that's another form of confusion. Loving yourself is about having self-respect, discovering what really makes you tick and spending your life being true to your real talents. It's about not putting yourself down and not comparing yourself to others. Once you learn to love yourself, you will be free of any sense of feeling threatened by others' success (real or apparent) and you will be able to share freely of your love with them.
 
To love truly is not only having a capacity to give love, but also to gracefully open your heart to receive love. Know that you deserve love. You are worthy of love The more you feel the love in your heart, the greater you are able to give more love to others.

• Love is shared between people––our parents and children, siblings, spouses and partners, dates, friends, neighbors, community members and humanity.
• It's found in the passion for the things you do in your life, including work, hobbies, volunteering and the like; it can be found when you're at your most creative, or "in the flow".
• Love happens when you embrace the wonderful awesomeness of life, as you acknowledge how incredible this world really is, how intricate and complex life is.
• Love is found in observing nature, in spending time with our companion animals and in learning about other living beings in the world, beings who often show their own expression of love to those they care for.
• Love is at its most giving when it is altruistic, shown to a stranger we may never meet again.
• Love cannot be pigeonholed––it happens whenever your heart is open to receiving the beauty, wonder and awe of people, beings and happenings around you.

Love those who don't love you. Love teaches you that hateful people are often driven by a lack of self-respect and that they're churned up about all the things they don't like about themselves, causing them to project this hate onto others. Of all people, haters need your compassion most. And it is love that leads to compassionate responses. Where hate is directed toward you, repel it with love and use their hatred as motivation to show that tolerance, kindness and acceptance are better ways to get along in our communities.

Accept risk. You cannot love without accepting that there is always a chance of loss of the love or of being hurt. That is what makes love so powerful though––we risk much because the reward of love is so great. And in losing love at times in life, you learn to appreciate the love you do have even more and you also learn that at times in life, it is better to let go than to force someone to love you. Most importantly, you have a choice. You have a choice to let a loss of love ruin you for all times, perhaps becoming like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, embittered all her life, emotionally stuck at the time of the loss. Or, you can make the choice to learn from hurtful experiences, however difficult the lesson, and move on to discover the many other people who won't reject your love and who will give freely of theirs.

• Think how lucky you are to have people in your life to love.
• Never seek to make an idol out of any person you love. This is likely to lose the person in the long run, as they'll feel pressured to live up to something you've imposed upon them. Let them be who they really are around you––that's a true expression of love.

Make love your eternal thing. Never stop loving other people who are in your life and who come and go. By sharing love around, you create a loving environment and you inspire others to do the same thing. You also show the best reflection of your worth to others when you love. More people showing love in our world means endless forgiveness, a willingness to give people second chances and a commitment to moving humanity forward, ever striving for greater harmony. Jean Anouilh once observed that "love is, above all, the gift of oneself." In giving of the best of who you really are to others in the name of love, you transcend selfish motives and introspection, and truly seek to appreciate others.

• Love is a means by which you start to see things more clearly together, to reach compromises or to collaborate, and to make room for finding a way forward that includes others, not just your ego.
• People become beautiful to you because you love them. In a society obsessed with appearance, it can often seem the other way around but the reality is that love makes a person beautiful and the imperfect perfect.

There are many types of relationships that involve love, but love itself is a common thread to all those relationships. For example: a mother-son relationship is different from the relationship with a best friend, and both these relationships are different from a romantic relationship. But in each of these relationships, each person loves the other (wants the best for the other). Love is the base of the pyramid. On top of the base, we can add other items such as other common interests (in the case of friends) or sex (in the case of romantic relationships). Therefore, relationships can grow and evolve but the love itself is solid and constant. It does not change.

Warnings

• You must love yourself before you can love another. But before you can love yourself, you must know and understand yourself profoundly. This deep understanding of yourself will automatically lead you to love yourself (since you will become aware of your divine essence) and you will also love every other person at that same moment (because you will recognize that same divine essence in every other person).
• Loving others isn't always easy. It's not supposed to be.
• There is always the risk of getting hurt. And if love switches to fear, remember to fully love and trust in your constant decision to choose love over fear.
• Jealousy is a clear sign of fear. Therefore the most appropriate response is to begin loving again (since we cannot love and fear at the same time).
• Realize what you have while you have it, and care for the person you love and trust.
• The idea of romantic love is often fueled by fantasies and much of the romantic love shown in movies and romance novels is unrealistic and causes real mortals to feel inadequate. Be aware that creatively written or filmed romantic love is a thing of art in its own––mere mortals are recommended to see that romantic love has warts. The more expansively you view romantic love, the more accepting you are that romantic love isn't always ideal and the more certain you are about who you are and what matters to you in life, the more likely you'll be to find happiness in romance. Leave those rose colored glasses slightly lifted at all times!
• Never seek to force love. You can try but you'll find fear, neediness and insecurity, not love. Love will come if you're willing to share love, to give of it freely and to expect nothing in return.

 

The Word Love

Love is an emotion of a strong affection and personal attachment. Love is also a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection —"the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another". Love may also be described as actions towards others or oneself based on compassion, or as actions towards others based on affection.
In English, love refers to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from pleasure ("I loved that meal") to interpersonal attraction ("I love my partner"). "Love" may refer specifically to the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the sexual love of eros, to the emotional closeness of familial love, to the platonic love that defines friendship, or to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love. This diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, compared to other emotional states.
Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts^.
Love may be understood as part of the survival instinct, a function to keep human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species.

The word "love" can have a variety of related but distinct meanings in different contexts. Often, other languages use multiple words to express some of the different concepts that English relies mainly on "love" to encapsulate; one example is the plurality of Greek words for "love." Cultural differences in conceptualizing love thus make it doubly difficult to establish any universal definition^.
Although the nature or essence of love is a subject of frequent debate, different aspects of the word can be clarified by determining what isn't love. As a general expression of positive sentiment (a stronger form of like), love is commonly contrasted with hate (or neutral apathy); as a less sexual and more emotionally intimate form of romantic attachment, love is commonly contrasted with lust; and as an interpersonal relationship with romantic overtones, love is sometimes contrasted with friendship, although the word love is often applied to close friendships.

When discussed in the abstract, love usually refers to interpersonal love, an experience felt by a person for another person. Love often involves caring for or identifying with a person or thing (cf. vulnerability and care theory of love), including oneself (cf. narcissism). In addition to cross-cultural differences in understanding love, ideas about love have also changed greatly over time. Some historians date modern conceptions of romantic love to courtly Europe during or after the Middle Ages, although the prior existence of romantic attachments is attested by ancient love poetry.
Because of the complex and abstract nature of love, discourse on love is commonly reduced to a thought-terminating cliché, and there are a number of common proverbs regarding love, from Virgil's "Love conquers all" to The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love". St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, defines love as "to will the good of another." Bertrand Russell describes love as a condition of "absolute value," as opposed to relative value. Philosopher Gottfried Leibniz said that love is "to be delighted by the happiness of another.
Love is sometimes referred to as being the "international language", overriding cultural and linguistic divisions.

Impersonal love

A person can be said to love an object, principle, or goal if they value it greatly and are deeply committed to it. Similarly, compassionate outreach and volunteer workers' "love" of their cause may sometimes be born not of interpersonal love, but impersonal love coupled with altruism and strong spiritual or political convictions. People can also "love" material objects, animals, or activities if they invest themselves in bonding or otherwise identifying with those things. If sexual passion is also involved, this condition is called paraphilia.

Interpersonal love

Interpersonal love refers to love between human beings. It is a more potent sentiment than a simple liking for another. Unrequited love refers to those feelings of love that are not reciprocated. Interpersonal love is most closely associated with interpersonal relationships. Such love might exist between family members, friends, and couples. There are also a number of psychological disorders related to love, such as erotomania.
Throughout history, philosophy and religion have done the most speculation on the phenomenon of love. In the last century, the science of psychology has written a great deal on the subject. In recent years, the sciences of psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, and biology have added to the understanding of the nature and function of love.
People with histrionic personality disorder, narcissism and bipolar disorder may have a limited or minimal capability of experiencing love

My Wild Love Poet

My Wild Love Poet

My wild love went riding
She rode all the day
She rode to the devil
And asked him to pay
The devil was wiser
It's time to repent
He asked her to give back
The money she spent
My wild love went riding
She rode to the sea
She gathered together
Some shells for her hair

She rode and she rode on
She rode for a while
Then stopped for an evening
And laid her head down
She rode on to Christmas
She rode to the farm
She rode to Japan
And re-entered a town
By this time the weather
Had changed one degree
She asked for the people
To let her go free
My wild love went riding
She rode for an hour
She rode and she rested
And then she rode on

Little about LOVE

Love is like sunshine. It brings a golden glow to its beholder's face. And a warm feeling all over their body. It awakens souls and opens eyes. And when its over, it leaves billions of small memories called stars. To remind the world, that it still exists


The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and to be loved in return

If you love someone put their name in a circle not a heart because hearts can break but circles go on forever.

The best and most beautiful things in the world can't be seen, nor touched, but are felt in the heart

People sometimes ask me what it's like to have three teenage girls in our house, to which I have a pat answer: hair products and hormones. Actually, that's not the half of it. We have more than our share of drama in the home, and it's not just genetically inherited. The ongoing trials and tribulations of "amour" would fill many pages of teen love quotes. With all the self-awareness, peer pressure, physical and emotional changes taking place in a relatively short period of time, it's difficult for adolescents to keep it all together, which explains their random emotional outbursts and irrational behavior. Fortunately, there are plenty of experienced older-generation types who have seen it all and can offer reflective insights on love - not just necessarily for teens, but all of us.
Dr. Dale Turner, the respected author and minister, authored uplifting articles for anyone seeking encouragement and answers to life's quandaries. His love quote: "Listen! Encourage. Say something. Do something. Be yourself. Love" is a good place to start for any age group. This emphatically punchy advice must certainly be directed at teens, since apparently they respond well to short blips of information - especially those transmitted through Internet videos and blogs.
Henry Ward Beecher, another prominent clergyman and social reformer, summarized teen love in one of his colorful love quotes full of fiery imagery: "Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable." You go, Henry!

My youngest daughter has had a crush on a fellow high schooler for two years. She admires him from afar and when I chidingly asked if she was going to ask him to the a dance, she cringed in horror at the thought. Her biggest concern is keeping her face from turning beet red when in his presence. Just being close to him evidently carries much greater potential for heavy sweating rather than heavy petting. Satirist and magazine editor H.L. Mencken summarized this in one of his teen love quotes, "To be in love is merely to be in a perpetual state of anesthesia." It explains the blank stare observed when one is in near their beloved, and the lack of a rational thought process in discerning the feelings of the opposite sex, prompting one of the more telling love quotes, "Don't say you love me unless you really mean it, because I might do something crazy like believe it."

For some teens, relationships take a back seat to other matters such as studies and sports. Perhaps those who are wrapped up in pursuits that are more intellectual could relate to one of the great love quotes by beauty maven Lisa Hoffman, "Love is like pi -- natural, irrational, and very important." How many of us wish our offspring were as obsessed with good grades as they are with the opposite sex? We also hope for our children that they learn to love themselves before they become engrossed in a relationship where they lose not only their innocence, but their self-identity and sense of value. These adolescents would do well to read the love quotes of inspirational author and self-help guru Louise Hay for positive direction. "Love is the great miracle cure. Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives" is one of many love quotes that teens in love would do well to write on a sticky note or on their binder or any of a million places they seem to doodle. Maybe they can write it on a mirror so when they are using those vast amounts of hair products it will sink into their ever-expanding brains!