The Power of a Wabi Sabi Love this Valentine's Day

In less than 10 days we will be celebrating the commercially created Valentine's Day which has supported and strengthened the greeting card industry since the 19th century.

Most people don't seem to remember that there is a martyred saint associated with this day of lovers and that in fact the 14 February is the day he died in Rome in 269 AD.

There is, in fact, quite a lot of controversy around who St Valentine was. Was he one or two people and did he actually assist Christian couples to wed? We're not really certain.

As a writer I'm rather glad to find that if it hadn't been for a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer in his collection  “Parliament of Foules,” we would not be linking St. Valentine to courtly romantic love at all... just think how many industries, love stories and fairy tales would possibly cease to exist without it!

For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day / Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.
Author - Geoffrey Chaucer 1375

As a practising psychic counsellor, love is the number one request for clarity at any time but as we approach Valentine's Day, all the emotional fallout of disappointed or unrequited love obsessions jams psychic phone lines around the world.

After years of counselling I am amazed at how we as individuals and society cling so tightly to the ideal of romantic love and hope with it's all encompassing vigour, and yet so many of us are clearly battle-scarred by our insistence on this ideal. We expect the pristine, the complete, the one - surely in this day and age the whole concept is superfluous to our modern lifestyles?

Perfect maybe if you are pre-romance and virginal (at whatever age that might be.)  But when statistics tell us that girls as young as 12 are sexually active maybe we should be viewing love differently? Should we be insisting that love and sex are intrinsically entwined or would we be better separating the two and talking of them as though they have nothing whatever to do with each other?

And, if we value the one, the first love experience, what does that mean for all other "loves" that follow? Are they to be denigrated as less important and listed as failures or should we look at all love experiences as an opportunity to understand and grow in love?

If we're aiming at exploring love for a lifetime then maybe it would be more realist and give us a healthier view of love if we see it as a continuous opening into more and deeper love. This is the concept behind Wabi Sabi love.

If you are the vessel that explores love, then aiming for a pristine container is limiting your capacity to love.

Yet if you aim for a vessel that has been broken and chipped, tenderly held together with glue and marked with wrinkles of age and worn with use - this is the heart that's loved, lost and been reborn again - resilient and willing to love deeper and fuller than before. 

I think a heart like this maybe as precious as we get in a lifetime and the love, understanding and wisdom we receive as a result... priceless. 

What do you think?