True love is when it is still a verb, as in loving, and not a noun!

To be loving and be loved is a miracle. Celebrate the miracle and, simply, carry on loving!

Today’s Valentine’s Day! And the whole world is agog with suggesting the best Valentine’s Day gift for you to give your Valentine. Roses to perfumes to candle-lit dinners to diamonds to cruise vacations to designer clothes to wallets to smart-phones to motorcycles to SUVs to what not! It makes me wonder if Valentine’s Day has become a Day for Demonstrating how much you love someone? As if love can be measured at all!

True love is when it is still a verb and not a noun. Love is more powerful when it is the loving that you feel, you experience in you for someone and from someone to you. Just love is so static. It can in fact stagnate. And that’s when you need the frills, the bells, the whistles, the roses and the gadgets. I am not against them. I am not impuning the dream merchants too, who hawk them as essentials to make yet another simple date on the calendar so extraordinary and so romantic! But let’s not get carried away and start imagining that professing love is more important than loving!

To me loving is about loving burned toast if your partner offers it to you, even if you hate burned toast! Here’s the story, narrated by an unknown little boy, that I heard years ago, that taught me this timeless moral! 

“When I was a little boy, I remember one day in particular when mom made breakfast food for dinner. 

She must have been very tired. My mom placed a plate of egg and some burned toast in front of my dad. I remember waiting to see if anyone noticed.

Yet all my dad did was, he reached for his toast, smiled at my mom, and asked me if I was ready for school the next day. I don’t remember what I replied, but I do remember watching him smear butter and jam on that toast and eat every bit of it!

When I got up from the table, I remember hearing my mom apologize to my dad for burning the toast. And I’ll never forget what he said: ‘Baby, I love burned toast.’

Later that night, I went to kiss Daddy and I asked him if he really liked his toast burned. He wrapped me in his arms and said, ‘Your Momma works hard day after day and she’s real tired. And besides a little burnt toast never hurt anyone!’ You know, Life is full of imperfect things…..and imperfect people…I am not perfect either!’”

This story and its lesson have stayed with me all these years. Burned toast to me is no longer a story. It is a lesson in loving. And I recall that lesson every time I feel impatient, temperamental and stagnating in love. It’s very recollection makes me feel free, loving and gets the positive energy in me flowing for my partner.

Pause for a while this Valentine’s Day. Think of all the times that you have offered your partner burned toast (metaphorically that is)__inadvertently, mindlessly, in anger, in despair, in grief or in frustration. Think of all the times when the burned toast was loved, accepted and relished. For each of those times, feel grateful for being loved and celebrate that miracle__when the imperfection in you was accepted, tolerated and forgiven. In feeling grateful you will feel even more loving.

This then is the way to being a true Valentine. When you can gift yourself and your partner all the loving in you, from you!

Yoko Ono and John Lennon

On this Valentine’s Day, let me gift you John Lennon’s immortal single (originally released in 1970 and then re-released after his death in 1982) ‘Love’. Follow the link and invoke the loving in you, and feel loved. You will then connect with the miracle called Life!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKQjxqzjdb4