Will You Be My Valentine
I woke up alone this morning. It’s ok. I’m single. The alarm clock is the first voice I hear every morning. Anything else would be unusual. Yesterday I made a post with a rose background for an upcoming gig I have the weekend before Valentine’s Day. This morning I posted it. It’s routine. The roses in the photo were from a bouquet my sister in law had given me. It was a beautiful gesture. It was a little thing to do, but a huge thing for my heart.
It’s still two weeks away, so the “I hate Valentine’s Day” rhetoric hasn’t yet begun to fly around, I wish it never would. I don’t hate Valentine’s day. I never have. It’s a love fest. Who could hate a love fest? But for much of humanity exposed to the concept, it’s a lack of love concept. Single. Alone. Lonely. Ah… is that a list or a progression? List. People can be in relationships and be lonely. I’m not jealous of that. I’ve been that woman. I’ve met that man.
Lonely is not about the lack of someone to be with. It is deeper than that. It’s the desire to connect with someone who wants to know you. Someone who finds out all about you and still chooses to be with you. Someone who sees your soul, awakens your spirit. Is with you. Spiritual contexts the world over suggest that this intimacy is something that flows out of oneness with nature, or God, or the Universe, or… that which is beyond us. I don’t think that is entirely untrue, but observation dictates we in the flesh are not alone on earth.
I grew up in the church, having a contradictory underlying pressure to be married and have a family contrasted with the vocally expressed sentiment that we find our all in Christ, and are never alone. Expressing that you need people to not be lonely is somehow wimpy spirituality.
Um. God did not stop at Adam, and at that point in the narrative, there were Three in the Trinity loving on One Human. The One who is that human’s very life decided it was not good for man to be alone. He put him to sleep, and and then awakened him to see one equal and opposite. He made balance happen. And He began, with those two, to build a community of people with hands and arms and feet, and mouths, and senses like taste, touch, and smell, hearing, seeing. We humans have cognitive functions that make connecting easy. Language, music, food, art, all expressions of a desire to connect. You don’t have to believe in God to want to be a part of something. However if you do, just where should love without reservation stop flowing, exactly?
I think our western culture, buried in identity crisis lobbying for rights to the exclusion and detriment of those around us is a scream to be seen, known and heard. But that’s not how it’s done. Being human is so much more basic than that. I am of value to you, you are of value to me. Our differences provide balance. Our rough edges grating on each other have amazing ways of bringing about healing in wounds left festering. How many songs have been written asking the question of “do you love me?” We want our lonely days to be over. But we don’t want to be the one who is vulnerable first. We want to be seen, but we aren’t willing to let the windows to our soul be washed with our own tears. We want someone to identify with what makes us angry, have what pity party we are currently engaged in validated.
But what if we just were. What if we became open, human, willing to just be. What if our outward gaze was gentle? What if we saw people? Just people? Not someone’s Valentine, but our own, even in the mirror? What if love could just be love. Then I would have to love me, and love you as I do myself. O, don’t get me wrong, the right voice would be preferable to an alarm clock. But I am only as alone as I let myself get. My neighbours have and arms and hands and feet. Family that lives far away has ears and a mouth, and would love a phone call. And you, have eyes, and are reading this. You know who you are. Does the person nearest you share that pleasure? Do you believe it is a pleasure? You can choose to. No matter how alone your behaviour may have made you, you are still there… who you were before life got it’s claws into you is still who you are.
Go back to the days when you carefully wrote a cute card for everyone in the class… even the teacher. There was a time even your calloused heart saw people. Will you, be my Valentine?