Do ya love?

As the dreaded Valentine's Day falls upon us and my social media feed is full of reminders that this is the all important day that will define how loved I am and thus my value as a human being, I can't help noticing that Valentine's Day seems evoke all of our fears, insecurities, vulnerabilities and wounds, and all of our defence mechanisms come out to play.

'We love each other every day, so don't have to do Valentine's Day, hey baby?'

'Valentine's Day is just a commercial farce, designed to make us feel bad about being single.'

'If you love me you will make Valentine's Day really special.'

Telling your partner 'I don't need you to get me anything.' While thinking if they love me they will surprise me anyway.

Seriously WTF no wonder Valentine's Day sucks for the majority of the population. We manipulate, test, reject, avoid and make fun of the the one thing we as human's all need Love. We set such tight parameters as to what love should look like, feel like and behave like that there's not a lot of room left to actually experience love.

Our ideas of love are often defined by pop culture and social media which even though we are all aware of the fact that these are curated, unreliable and manipulated reference sources, for some reason we choose to ignore this fact and use them to make ourselves feel less than we truly are.

At some point most of us rebel against Valentine's Day. We put up our defences and deny any desire to be in a relationship, because of course that it the true definition of being loved according to our not so reliable sources. We become anti-Valentine's Day - down with love, I don't need love, love is stupid, men suck, women suck, love is pain, relationships are a trap, and so on and so forth. All in an attempt to prove how much happier we are without love.

So what is the point of Valentine's Day if it just makes most of us just feel shit (even if we totally don't care about it). Why have a day about love that we openly rebel and resist? Don't we all want a little love in our lives?

Why is love such a scary concept? Why are we afraid to show love? Why are we afraid to receive love or not receive love? Why are we afraid to let others see our love? Love is a good thing, it feels nice, it lifts us up, connects us, inspires us, helps us to be our best selves and to be of service to others. So what's the problem?

We are afraid because many of us have made love an outside job with specific requirements. Some of us have even managed to make the concept of loving ourselves a task to be completed in order to finally be worthy of the love we hope to receive from others. But love doesn't work this way. You can't fake that shit. As you look through your fabulous instagram feed, you know the truth, you know the effort that went into each image, the pondering over the perfect image and what others would think, the messier moments that you deleted. We look to the fake for validation but really we crave authenticity, to feel safe in our messy, unpredictable, ordinary, weird, actual lives. To feel loved just as we are, as Mark Darcy perfectly declares to Bridget Jones.

So how do we reclaim and redefine Valentine's Day for good rather than evil? We start again. We use love as an act of peaceful rebellion rather that an enemy to be defeated.

We redefine how we experience love. We seek it out and welcome it in rather than closing the door. We give it to ourselves and those around us freely and without expectations or conditions. We treat love as a friend rather than a foe, as an ever evolving relationship where it is safe to be ourselves.

In theory it begins with us accepting and loving ourselves in a way that is authentic to us and then it overflows into all aspects of our lives and our connections with those around us. But sometimes it just starts with letting yourself be loved, because receiving is just as important as giving. Love can be felt from so many sources, music, books, art, time spent in nature, the food we prepare, coffee, sleeping in, meditation, exercise, our clothes, pets as well as people. It can come from whatever resonates with us.

When we drop the rigid walls of what love should look like and just let love in, in whatever form it comes to us, it turns out its not as scary as we thought. We are no longer using our energy to fight, play annoying games, second guess, control, manipulate and validate ourselves and others, and we find we have a lot more space to actually enjoy the love we have.

So as we toddle through another Valentine's Day maybe its time to pump the tunes and reclaim this day for Love, in all its many forms. Let love in and give it freely. Celebrate openly, give authentically, say I love you loudly and recieve gratefully. Because it's not about who you love, it's all about do ya love.