Really, when all is said and done, is there anything new to be said about love? Can I add a single meaningful word to the countless books, plays, poems, sonnets, movies,  songs, TV shows, pleas and observations about love? Love, like anything else is a personal thing, it varies in centrality and importance from heart to heart. Some people want it, others seem to push it aside. It seems to have vanished, for now, from our political system, our media, our workplace, even from the core messages of people and institutions who call themselves religious. A young friend tells me she hates sentimentality and mistrusts anyone who tosses terms like “love” around, she finds them hypocritical in our world. I understand this, it is not what she sees all around her, why should she believe in it when she hears yet another sappy person talking about it?

The therapists tell us we do what we see, we are what we know. If we grew up in the middle of a loveless world, then that is what is normal for us. The spiritual counselors say love is about energy and the laws of attraction. If we think love, if we want it, it will find us or we will find it. Every great religious, political or spiritual leader has understood the power of love – Jesus, surely, King, Merton, Gandhi, Mohammed – and used it to transform the world. Yet my friend has a good point. If you watch the news, follow our leaders, see the great religions and their dogma it is easy to think the whole idea is a shuck. Imaging a President talking to our Congress about love? Cynicism, like anger, corrodes the very idea of love. I can testify to that as well. Somebody wrote on my Facebook Page yesterday that she has given up on the idea of love, choosing to stick with the reliable and enduring love of animals. I get that too. I did that too.

I imagine that there was love all around me in my life, perhaps I could not accept it or see it or believe it was possible. Perhaps I just didn’t know what it is. Love, like generosity and faith, takes a great deal of work. I work at it every day. I think of it every day. I fail at it every day and sometimes, I succeed with it. All I can say is that my perception of love is that it is something of a decision. It begins internally, for me, with a commitment. It takes some work.

Speaking as a man, I can say the biggest obstacle to love for me was an openness to it. I just don’t think I was open to it, or really grasped what it was and it’s centrality to my life. I was always afraid of the wrong things, chasing the wrong things. I was fortunate late in life to encounter a loving person, who was open to it, and who feels it as naturally as I did not. And to learn that the thing to fear is a loveless life.

I have come to see animals as spirit guides for me, partners in my search for love. Their purpose for me is not to replace human love, but to guide me to it. I was thinking the other day of Lenore was sitting by the podium during the State of The Union message, we would be living in a different world. And then, I realized that this was serious, it might be true. Rose held the fort for me until I could find love, and then when I did, she left, perhaps to help another poor human soul do the same thing. Lenore kept love alive in my heart when hope was fading. Izzy helped teach me how to practice love when when we visited people on the edge of life. Orson showed me something of the pain of love, when I realized he could not live in this world. Frieda helped bring me to the real thing. She guided me to it, I saw it happen. The donkeys came into my life as spirit guides, steadying me, guiding me. Rocky, that most faithful and enduring of creatures,  brought me to our new home. Animals have been important to me in my search for life. I think they led me there, willing to work with me once I was willing to work.

I am not so arrogant as to think I have new ground to break about life, but thinking about it the last few days – and now, Valentine’s Day – I do realize that love is the point for me. Every photo I have ever taken is a love letter to my wife, that is the source of my search for light and color and emotion. That is how my photos began, that is how they continue.

Every time I can practice love, my heart and my life grow. Every time I fail,  my life shrinks. This morning I dedicate myself to telling the woman I love how much I appreciate her. I will bring her small things she does not yet know about – a tie-dyed Rose, a small painting, a cup of tea, some notes left around the house. I will simply tell her this day and every day that I love her and I mean for it to be authentic, and I will take her to Momma’s for a veggie wrap and a glass of wine. We are not into fancy restaurants these days.  Maybe one person who has given up on love with look at this curious older man with no hair and grumpy knees from too many falls and think if-he-did-it-I-can-do-it and give it another shot. Or maybe one young person sneering at this cold and greedy and angry world the adults in her life seem to be creating will revive it as a cool and universal idea as important as any political movement, ideology or bad news story.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you. May love reign for me, for you.