If another loves you but you cannot feel the same, what does it mean? Are you cold and unfeeling? Is that other in love with love instead of with you?

Is romantic love but an illusion born of desire, or perhaps loneliness? Do we ever see others for who they are, or simply for who we want them to be? And if so, why do we choose to see one in a flattering light and another as dull and uninteresting, or even repugnant?

Some cringe at the pairs that do not match their image of what “the perfect couple” is. But who are any of us to decide where someone else’s affections should fall? In reality, none of us seem to have such control over our own affinities.

“Soul mate” is a term one hears and reads: the notion that we have loved in other lifetimes and recognize each other in this incarnation, or the idea that someone in the world will make us “complete” and forever happy.

But is our happiness dependent upon another at all, much less on one particular being in all creation? Should we not find our happiness within ourselves?

In the end, are we all searching for a mate, or for something more profound: deep connection beyond the physical…connection to humanity, connection to Source Creator, connection to our own humanity and the Source Creator within us?

Whatever the answers to such questions, I wish all a Valentine’s Day of heartfelt joy.

[Photo courtesy of Oliver Gruener of FreeImages.com]