Steve Frey
Today is Valentine’s Day, and yes, love is all around the New River Valley, but it’s not found in the diamond necklace television commercials or pictures of couples walking hand in hand to promote perfume in an internet ad.
It is found in each of our hearts, and it has steadily grown stronger every time it has reached out to us.
Love is found in a moment. We all live lives filled with so many hectic activities (and sometimes mundane) that we have a hard time remembering them in subsequent days.
But there are a few moments that we remember forever, times where love touches us, if only for a short while. Those are the moments we should cherish all our lives, and on Valentine’s Day, when we are bombarded with others’ interpretations of what love is, perhaps we should consider how love has quietly interlaced itself throughout our lives.
Love is not always that thing that sweeps us off our feet and carries us through the air, floating from one moment, one thought, to another, romantically entranced with that other person. Romantic love is just one variant in the grand spectrum of love.
Love found us, and we have found love in many different ways.
Each of us can remember moments from our childhood where we were immersed in the love of parents, grandparents or other important adults in our lives. Sometimes we felt the comforting warmth of words that were spoken just when we needed them most.
Often, however, there were no words at all: it was an embrace, a soft look of understanding, or a caring act which heartened us.
Family members provided us with the light to guide us around the shadows in life with a sense of overwhelming protection, reassuring us that, “There is nothing to fear, for you are loved.”
At some point, we awakened to a realization of the love that embraced us, and we reciprocated naturally, with innocent and sincere hearts.
Then there are friends, some of them friends for a lifetime. Friends laugh together and cry together. They dream and they scheme and they fight and live life between frenzied whirlwinds of activity and quiet moments of contemplation or compassionate commiseration. Inseparable bonds of friendship are seamed together with a thread guided by the sure hand of love.
At some point, we may have met a person who moved us romantically. Sometimes it was for a short while, and sometimes it became a lifetime. Love can be unpredictable.
We hold hands with a person, they look into our eyes and through to our soul, and we are touched by love, but then we part for whatever reason, and that moment becomes just another in a string of encounters with love we will never forget.
On the other hand, we may find another person who shares with us a lifetime of those moments, each built on giving and receiving, understanding and patience, compassion and forgiveness, and, yes, the love that binds us together.
Children sometimes come along and we guide them, then walk beside them, and then try to keep up with them as they move through the ups and downs of life; celebrating the high points with them, and comforting them during the difficult times.
Grandchildren give us a chance to learn from our mistakes with our children and reinforce all that is good with a clean slate. The one constant with our children and grandchildren is always love.
Outside of family, there are other moments when love enters our lives.
Often it comes through the kindness of a caring teacher, although teachers are not the only ones at a school who help to make it a home away from home. Sometimes, it is the secretary or the school nurse who fills in as a second mom, sharing her love with 500 or so children.
Then there are the college professors who help us decide what we want to be when we grow up. There’s the neighbor next door who brings cookies as a welcome and becomes a friend and confidant for life.
There’s the co-worker who picks us up when we’re down and with whom we can share all of the burdens of life.
There is the nurse or doctor who takes time to help us understand and be strong. There is the guy at the hardware store who always knows the answer.
The calm car repairman, that waitress who always smiles, the handyman who knows how to fix anything, the encouraging words of a minister; all of them make connections with us and help us when we need it most.
Connection becomes trust, and trust becomes caring, and caring, over time, becomes the comfortable warmth of love.
For some of us, there is a pet who always meets us at the door and loves us
Many find a religious tie that teaches us to love.
John’s gospel says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” The Dalai Lama, who is Buddhist, said, “I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion.”
In all of these varied situations in life, and so many others, we are sometimes the provider and we are sometimes the receiver, but again, the constant is the love we share with one another. Yes, love is all around us now and has been throughout our lives.
Valentine’s Day is not just about the candy or flowers or jewelry we may buy downtown. Yes, symbols of affection are wonderful and help us to feel loved, but it is the everyday interactions with others that are the most important, the most real.
Throughout our lives, we have had wonderful people who have shared their love with us, and we with them. They have helped us to feel cared for and special. We have always been, and are now, loved.
We should take a moment to reflect on all those people in our lives, past and present, with whom we have found love. The future, however, is up to us. We make the choice every day to share love with others, or not.
We are all connected to each other not just by family, neighborhood, or town, but through our common humanity.
Love is not a limited commodity. It can be found in any environment, in any season, and by any person. We just have to care enough to share it.
So on this Valentine’s Day, whether we are sitting in a house filled with family, noise, and commotion in Radford, or we are relaxing alone in the quiet of our favorite space in Christiansburg, in addition to the love we send to others, we should take time to reaffirm with a quiet whisper to ourselves, “you have loved, and you are loved.”
You truly are.
And smile, because, really, love is all around.
Steve Frey is a writer and CEO of Ascendant Educational Services based in Radford.
