All you need is love?

Hello! Good morning, good day and salutations mes petits beaux anges. Yes, as you probably ALL know, today is not an ordinary day. Today is a very special day indeed. Today is the day where we can openly gambol about like spring lambs. Where we can wander about with a silly smile permanently fixed to our joy filled faces. Where we can be free and open with our feelings, and can tell those that we love, just how much we love them, and even tell those whom don't know we love them, just how much they mean to us. Or maybe just remind those who know we love them, that we still do. Yes, that's right, today is THAT very special day . . . it's Friday.

Of course it just happens to be Valentines Day as well, and so the subject of love must be addressed. As the poet Mr John Winston Lennon once wrote: "It's easy. All you need is love". However, I think he was wrong. There really is nothing easy about love. Sure it's easy to FALL in love, that's just a release of chemicals made up of a small protein called 'oxytocin' or 'the cuddle hormone', (yes really!) that is composed of nine amino acids. It's produced in the hypothalamus and is then released by the pituitary gland. It causes us to desperately want to go and talk to the person that has triggered this chemical to be released into our brain, even if the very thought of it, causes our hearts to race and our palms to begin to sweat. You're nervous and excited in equal measure, but the draw towards that person is too strong. It's futile to try and fight it. So really falling in love couldn't be easier!

It's afterwards that our emotions and thought patterns gets in the way. You worry that you're coming on to strong, so you back off slightly. Or you worry that you're not coming on strong enough, or showing enough interest, so you overdo it. Or sometimes you worry that, the other person can't possibly feel the same way about you, that you feel about them. Yes, being in love is sometimes the most emotionally draining and difficult experience of our lives. Of course it doesn't ever stop being difficult either. Sure the emotions change, the bonds become stronger, but the difficulties change with it, and the challenges take on different forms, but essentially it's still not what would be described as easy.

There are of course times when it does appear to be easy, you're both just ticking along, full of smiles and giggles, seemingly without a care in the world. But we all know that underneath it all, when things are buoyant and happy the human brain likes to play mind games with us, and starts to try and convince us that something awful is bound to happen sooner or later, because that when those kind of things happen.

Still, as difficult as love actually is, I think we can all agree on one thing. We'd much rather have it and experience the difficulties, than to be alone without them. So if you're one of those people who do like to jump on the Valentines Bandwagon, then do have yourself a blissfully joyous one. Although do spare a thought and a great big cuddle to those that find this day of the year the hardest to get through. We all need to feel a bit of love from time to time, especially those who think they'll never experience it. So whatever you're doing today, do it with love.