don't hate the V-day!

I'm so cynical of "true love" because of my past that I don't know I've ever known it and don't know if I'll ever find it but it doesn't mean I don't believe in it on some level. In fact, that natural, comforting, it's ok to cry on your shoulder-wanna put my feet up on your lap-melt in your arms kinda thing is something I hope to drink in one day like sweet nectar.

And as much as I think V-day is overcommercialized like Christmas... like Christmas it's a time to remember when otherwise you might forget to tell people you love that you love them. Whatever these days are for anyone else - for me, they are a day to share the most precious gift in the world.

A few of my favourite love quotes ... including one stolen from my friends' FB status that said "if you can find someone that can make you smile, hold onto them with all you've got". cute... I'd rearrange that to be "if you can find someone that can make you smile and laugh on a bad day, keep them close and never let them go". Same-same

- how giving love increases your love... like sex - the more you have the more you want to have... the more you hoard love the less you want to give...the more you give the more you want to give - it multiplies like compound interest - so thought Shakespeare... this one is my favourite and reminds me of how I used to be...

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

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.
- Henry Ward Beecher
mmm... unquenchable is a great word - I need some unquenchable as my hot and fierce loves have been unsatisfying...so I must be old ;)

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
- Anais Nin
- must be true because married people, especially men, live longer and happier than unmarried people

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
-why I hate seeing trophy wives and boytoys... buy a hooker, hire a poolboy, but don't powertrip on someone else for the gain of your own ego's insanity. Emotional abuse is not love... love makes people grow into their full potential of life and breath...domination minimizes and degrades and stifles.

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
- Zora Neale Hurston
- you can't actually love if you stay hidden away, afraid and superficial


“Love me when I least deserve it, because that's when I really need it.”
- this one must've been written for me

LOVE LOVE LOVE this one... “Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours

this is old and cliche but I still like it...
“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly”

Brad Paisley sang this new cliche which sings to those that feel mostly invisible in the world because they are nothing Hollywood or New York, nothing outlandish or glitzy, just the girl next door... "To the world you may be just one person,
but to one person you may be the world."

Where there is love, there is God also.
~ Leo Tolstoy ~
- I believe this one 100%...there has not been true love in my life where there has not been God.

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."
--Lao Tzu
It's not that people aren't strong and courageous without it... but it gives you that nitrous boost when you have someone in your corner to add to what you've already got.

"Love doesn't make the world go round, love is what makes the ride worthwhile."
--Elizabeth Browning
among other things.

The "right" love doesn't make life, but it does make it brighter and more sparkly. Having someone to share the best of life and the worst of life makes the best double and the worst, bearable. The wrong love can be hell but probably makes the right love more appreciated and less easily tossed away. It's never as simple as these silly quotes that they smack in cards and charge $5 for, but I believe it's out there and worth fighting for. I think you know the right person by the fact that they never give up on you, never stop fighting for you, and love you when you least deserve it and it adds something more to your life than what you had before or could get on your own.

but.... what do I know - it's just a theory ;) And on Valentine's day it's not just about romantic love - there are lots of people I love in my heart that are not romantic loves and it's a good excuse to tell them how much I care about them if I've forgotten to lately.

<3