Every holiday stirs up emotions. But Valentine’s Day is special. If you have a loved one, you’re probably looking forward to it, especially since this one lands conveniently on a weekend. If you’re alone, you’re probably looking forward to Monday or better yet, Tuesday when not only will the holiday be over, but so will all the talk about “What I did on Valentine’s Day.”
But why do we limit Valentine’s Day to romance? Why not simply dedicate it to love? And why only one day a year? Why can’t we celebrate love every day? After all, nothing makes us happier than loving others and being loved, so why not nurture it and enjoy it each day of the year?
As a scientist and Kabbalist, I learned that the key to a meaningful life is giving and receiving. The trick is that both need to be carried out with a feeling of connection, unity, and love. Without giving and receiving through love, life would not be possible; it is how we are all created. Nature acts this way on every level of reality, but we humans often forget it and focus on hatred and denial of the other rather than on love and embracing of each other.
These days the world is filled with hatred, intolerance, and xenophobia. But “Society is unity in diversity,” to quote George Herbert Mead. Embracing the differences between us make us stronger, agile, open to ideas, and generally more alive. If we could find a way to always live that way, every day, humanity would be happy.
The plights and challenges ahead are enormous, but how we cope with them depends on us. If we relate to them as heralds telling us we must enhance our unity and mutual responsibility, we will turn plight to pleasure, and discover that they were blessings in disguise.
Every time we overcome a challenge that threatens to set us apart from one another, we enhance and strengthen our connection. This is true for couples, as it is true for friends, co-workers, and business partners. The problem is that for the most part, when a challenge arrives, we forget that it is actually an opportunity to better our relations and solidify our connections. We fall into the trap of self-righteousness. This is OK, but after the initial, natural reaction, we must shape up and take the chances life hands to us.
If we keep that state of mind, we will be much happier people, and we will make others happier, too. And as we make them happy, they will project their happiness onward, which will in turn reflect on us, making us even happier than we were before we set off the cycle.
In our interconnected world, the media affects not just our views, but also our mood and state of mind. We need to pay attention to what we watch, because it will change how we perceive life, and how much we enjoy it. We only have one life (as far as we can tell), so why waste it on negative emotions? If we expose ourselves to positive news, even the little that is currently aired, we will change ourselves and shift our emotions to a positive direction. And as with spreading happiness, our choices in life will influence the choices of others, and the media will change, as well, to reflect our preferences. As we watch positive media, our attitudes will become even more positive, since the media will influence them in this way. In this way, spreading friendship, love, and unity, we will create a world made of the positive emotions we project.
This is how we can have Valentine’s Day, every day.
