Spread The Love

It’s February, the official love month.

Valentine’s Day centers on romance, but that’s just one facet of love. Valentine’s Day also focuses on feelings. Yes, it’s lovely to feel love—but real love transcends emotion. Real love is an action. Actions that people of all ages can take.

How can we show love? Let’s think outside the chocolate box.

Love your partner
This Valentine’s Day, let’s think beyond champagne and roses. What dreams, ambitions or long-lost hobbies set your partner yearning? Has she been longing to paint again? Actively support her dreams with a new easel. Has he been longing to finally write that novel? Create a physical space with a writing table and comfortable chair—and then allow him the mental space for his creativity to take flight.

Love expands our comfort zones. Does your spouse have an irrational love of hiking and would love you to accompany her but you’d rather watch soccer? Go on—take that hike with her. Active love makes our partners actively happy. Love is also mutual. Which means that, having enjoyed that lovely hike together, now you suck it up and watch sports with your mate. You don’t have to like the game; you just have to love him.

Love your kids
The most loving gift you can give your child, no matter how old they are? See them fully and unflinchingly for exactly who they are, and encourage them to become all they want to be. Love doesn’t give two cents for approval. Love is open-hearted acceptance. When parents fully accept their children, children more fully accept and love themselves.

Love your relatives
We may be related by blood or marriage, but that doesn’t mean we like being around them. That’s okay. We don’t have to like our relatives—we just have to love them. Love respects differences. Love respects boundaries. If necessary, we can love from afar.  

If you like, respect and enjoy all your relatives, yahoo, you win! That’s something to celebrate all year long!

Love your friends
Remember their birthdays. Send a card and make a call. Tell your friends, out loud, that you love, value and appreciate them. Tell them why you love them. Tell them now—while they’re alive to hear and savor it.  

Create quality time for your friends—in person, on the phone, in emails or texts. Keep in touch regularly. Remember: these are the people we choose to love. Keep choosing them, in obvious ways.

Love your neighbors
Take in their trash cans. Bake an extra banana bread or brew an extra pitcher of iced tea. Shovel their side of the sidewalk, too. (Once we have the Covid all-clear) invite them over for movie night with your family. You don’t have to like them. But everyone benefits if you love them.

Love your community
Pick up litter. Pick it up as you go, or join an organized community effort. Start community efforts. Plant greenery. Volunteer at the local library. Attend town hall meetings. Vote in local elections. It’s your community; help make it a place everyone wants to live. 

Love your co-workers
Pick up a shift or an extra project when your workmate needs time off. Congratulate a colleague on a job well done. Are you feeling overwhelmed? Ask a co-worker for help. People like to give help; it makes them feel competent.  

Is there someone at the office who’s a bit, um, difficult? Leave a beautiful plant on their desk, anonymously. They’ll wonder who in the world is giving them a gift. They’ll lighten up before your eyes. Try it. It works.

Love strangers
Feeling disconnected from society in general? Put quarters in random parking meters. You’ll suddenly feel very connected.

Love your pets
That’s easy. Extra cuddles and a fresh bone for your dog, a pillow and sunny spot for your cat. If only humans were as easy.

Who really benefits from all this loving? We do. The more kindness, compassion, generosity and open-heartedness we show to others, the more love we generate for ourselves.

The Beatles were right: “And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make.” Happy Valentine’s Day to one and all!