February is the month that we celebrate several special days, but one day seems more important than the rest and that is Valentine’s Day. It comes in third in commercial sales after Halloween and Christmas.

Why are we typically always wondering about love? It could be out of fear of uncertainty in or out of a relationship. It could be because we could have been accused of not showing enough love to someone but why is it that when we do not really understand it, we tend to make our decisions, good or bad, based on love?

 The historical roots come from several stories. Roman emperor Claudius II imposed a ban on marriages because too many young men were dodging the draft by getting married (only single men had to enter the army). A Christian priest named Valentinus ignored the ban and performed secret marriages. He was caught, then imprisoned and sentenced to death. While awaiting execution, young lovers visited him with notes about how much better love is than war—the first “valentines.” Valentinus’ execution occurred in 269 CE on February 14th, the Roman day dedicated to celebrating love and fertility. In 469, Emperor Gelasius declared it a holy day in honor of Valentinus instead of the pagan god Lupercus. This allowed Christianity to take over some of the celebrations of love and fertility which had previously occurred in the context of paganism.

Another Valentinus was a priest jailed for helping Christians. During his stay, he fell in love with the jailer’s daughter and sent her notes signed “from your Valentine.” He was eventually beheaded and buried on the Via Flaminia. Reportedly Pope Julius I built a basilica over his grave. A third and final Valentinius was the bishop of Terni and he was also martyred, with his relics being taken back to Terni.

Love is one of the most profound emotions we experience as humans. It is bigger than us, meaning, though we can invite it into our lives, we do not have the control over the when, where and why love expresses itself. Many do believe in “love at first sight,” and truly sometimes, love does strike like a bolt of lightening to the chest, and you are not prepared for it.

Love is inherently free. We may spend many nights tossing and turning trying to understand what it is and how to know if we have it. But how do you define something so uncontrollable and versatile?

That is the tricky thing about love, we can feel it in a variety of different states. When we are happy, sad, angry, confused or excited, our attitudes about love can range from affectionate love to infatuation and pleasure. We even use love as an action, as a force to keep our relationships with partners, or friends and family, together.

The ancient Greeks used seven words to define the different states of love we can experience:

Storage: natural affection

Philia: friendship

Eros: sexual and erotica

Agape: unconditional, divine love

Ludus: flirting

Pragma: committed, married love

Philautia: self love

There are many kinds of love to experience. The romantic and affectionate expression of love is what, on some level, we are all seeking. The reason being a majority of us find fulfillment through the comfort of a deeply committed and romantic relationship. Many believe it is the main reason they choose to get married, so it is easy to acknowledge that the idea of love plays a pretty big role in all of our lives.

But, because love takes on different forms, we can each experience love in our own way, which is why defining the term ‘love’ is so complicated. It is typically based on Chemistry, Commitment, Infatuation and Compatibility. We can typically understand those definitions, but Love should be in fact something more or at the least have more meaning to us. We can all understand biology. We can understand that it is a basis for companionship in a variety of forms, but in all the expressions there is, we should realize that loving the self, unconditionally is the true basis of our being here on this planet. When we love ourselves and take care of the things that are important to us, we end up make it easier for people to not have to worry about us or how we are doing. When we are not loving ourselves and we end up sharing those feelings constantly with friends and family, just how unhappy we are because we do not have someone to love, they are in turn worrying and thinking about us. But their love is never enough, or our love of ourselves, not the narcissistic type of love, just enjoying our part in life. When we do truly love ourselves we bring love to us in a variety of forms and when we define what loving ourself means we bring exactly the type of love we want. People who become resistant to it, end up bringing in love that will be challenging.

Love should not be a terrible thing to have. It should be something we all know, freely flows through the universe. You will have and lose it time and time again. Having it and losing it in all forms is important to us. When we understand the purpose and expressions of love, we can find that it is a teacher for us in our lives. It helps us to understand ourselves more. It can help us learn right from wrong types of love and most importantly, it can help us to grow and learn. Love is transformative. If you let love into your heart in all the varieties that exist, you truly have a connection to a deeper understanding of yourself and after all, even a little bit of it can go a very long way.

Blessings,

Steven