Happy Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is a day dedicated to the expression of love. People express love using different means like gifts, flowers, chocolates, letters etc. But the definition of ‘love’ keeps changing with time from experiencing love by exchanging notes and chocolates as students to sharing life with your partner in adulthood.

True love….really??

Make a list of people whom you truly love. The list can comprise of anyone from within your family, friends, cousins etc. Now rate your relationship with everyone on the list (rating out of 100). Is it the same with everyone? Well, not necessarily. Let’s look at it from a different perspective. Instead of referring to the entire list, what if you’re asked to rate your relationship with any one person only. Think of all your moments with that person and check how consistent has your rating been.

Why doesn’t our love remain the same always?

Before getting into the reasons for failure in love, let us try to understand what LOVE is in the first place.

LOVE

According to Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan,

• That which increases one moment and decreases the next, is not love: That which remains the same always, is real love.
• That where there is no selfishness; where there are no feelings of ‘yours-mine’.
• That which does not show the person’s fault due to unfulfilled selfish motives of sex, greed or pride.

Though we do not want to harbor any negativity or abhorrence for that person, yet we end up doing that.

What are the reasons behind it?

• Non-fulfillment of the expectations or demands from the other person
• Possessiveness
• Jealousy
• Undue importance to material possessions and worldly things… etc.

These are some of the reasons that doesn’t let our love rating remain consistent with anyone. How can we improve that?

How to develop real love for everyone?

• By getting rid of our opinions and differences (yours-mine) with people
• By developing a feeling of Oneness with everyone
• By not carrying any selfish intent behind our actions
• By developing the power of forgiveness towards everyone, even those who cause harm to us or hurt us

It is not possible to develop all these virtues in a single day but we can at least have an intent of doing so. Being loved and loving others is the greatest virtue of humanity.

On this Valentine’s Day, let us take a step forward and celebrate the day in its true spirit.