IT’S WHAT MAKES THE RIDE WORTHWHILE

At this time of year as Valentines Day approaches once again, all focus is on love.

This one day of the year can bring loneliness into sharper focus than any other day of the year. Like Christmas it is closely associated with togetherness and whilst it can unite people in love it isolates those who have no one to celebrate it with.

Plato wrote ‘love is a grave mental disease’ and those who have ever experienced being ‘in love’ certainly describe that feeling of madness that shuts out the rest of the world. It becomes all consuming, controlling every ounce of our being and every second of our lives. It takes on a magical quality having the power to alter people and direct lives.

Love is the narrative thread not only in novels, but in life, it produces possibilities and is an agent for change.

If you are single on Valentines Day and wish you weren’t, the temptation to wrap your self up in misery and hide away must be banished, that way lays loneliness.

Not being in love is not important, what is important is that one is capable of love. So as Auden said ‘In the deserts of the heart, let the healing fountain start’. If you are open to love there is more truth than nonsense in the idea that if you live the life you have imagined it will become reality. People in love give off a palpable air of happiness which is infectious - try to copy them even if you fake it, get out there and have fun. It does not have to be a nightclub or a trendy bar, though they are fertile ground, but often when your expectations are at there lowest love will find you. Wordsworth wrote ‘Love can be found in huts where poor men lie’ so explore every avenue.