A Day of Love

Today is Valentine's Day.  Although the holiday, dating back to the 14th Century, originated as a Christian Feast day, it has always been associated with love.  Apparently, Saint Valentine was known to perform marriages for soldiers, who were forbidden from marrying.  In the 18th Century, people gave keys to invite their intended to unlock their hearts.

Why is it that we lock our hearts? I believe that we are hardwired to love so that we need to lock our hearts seems counter-intuitive.  The heart and love and giving of ourselves to another is turf that I've worked a lot.  I wish I could say I had the answers; I don't.  But that doesn't mean that I have stopped trying to find them.

In my heart of hearts I know that being in that state of Oneness that is love transcends all other human conditions.  I believe it is the closest that we come to heaven on earth. So why do we so fear it?

A 93-year-old World War II veteran was reunited with his now 88-year-old wartime sweetheart this week.  She is in Australia.  He lives in the Washington, D.C. area. When asked about the danger of taking such a long flight at his age, he responded that he would rather risk death than live the rest of his life without her.

My adopted parents who met in the same era at a USO Dance, married after just a few days, and they were like sweethearts for over 60 years.  I remember observing them looking at each other on their 50th anniversary like lovestruck teenagers.  A friend told me a couple days ago about his parents who met similarly, married soon, and spent 54 years together.  These are the stories of Valentine's Day myths, but they aren't myths: they are true stories.

For many of us, I believe that staying in the flow of love with another person may be our most important spiritual journey. It is hard work, and many of us just don't like hard work.  Hearts that have been hurt or broken become increasingly skittish, afraid that they will ever have to endure that horrible ache again.  Yet to not risk the heartache means to risk ever experiencing that blissful "heaven-on-earth" feeling again. Maybe that is why we need keys to unlock our hearts.

In my meditation about the nature of love and opening our hearts today, it came to me that many of us treat our hearts that have been broken like precious crystal that once shattered can never be mended. But, our hearts are muscles.  Even when physically broken open, they do heal.

Many years ago when I was first lifting weights, the trainer told me that we actually build muscle by tearing it.  We lift, the muscle tears, and the muscle heals.  Yet when it heals, the muscle is stronger. He told me that it was important not to work the same muscle groups two days in a row so that the muscle would have time to heal. Allowing ourselves to heal is essential to the process, but we do heal, and the very act of tearing is what makes the muscle strong.

So perhaps it is the act of allowing our hearts to be broken that makes them grow stronger. They are not the undeveloped hearts of untested youth, but instead they are stronger.  Maybe our mission should not be to avoid love because our hearts have been broken, but to actually move toward love because our hearts are stronger, strong enough to fully take in a more enduring love.

While most of this post has inferred romantic love, I believe it is true of all love, and it is especially true of love that connects us as human beings. Because someone from the Middle East did something bad, we shut our hearts so we will not be hurt again.  Yet there are many out there, like millions of refugees, not unlike many of our own ancestors, who would love us and want to be with us. They would make our lives richer.

I have coached a number of people who distrust their bosses, not because that person ever did something to them, but because some other person at another job did. They were hurt and can't trust a new and very different boss.  Others push away a friend who sleighted them, and in these social media times they impale the person on the skewer of Twitter and Facebook.

Valentine's Day then seems like an appropriate time to remember that our hearts are muscles.  They mend. They grow stronger.  They can love again even after being hurt.  It is that ability to love again that makes us human and at the same time makes us divine.  God wants us to love. My Valentine's Day wish for each of you is to love and to love not just where it is easy but to love where it is hard.