The Morning After Valentine's Day

How did Valentine's Day go for you?  Did you wake up this morning feeling grateful and loved?  Disappointed or shattered? Or totally indifferent to the whole valentine set-up?  It's an easy day to love or hate. If you have someone special in your life, it can be a fun day but if you're alone, and don't want to be, it can be painful. And, if you like being on a soap-box, it makes for a good rant.  There's lots to say about  commercializing affairs of the heart and pressuring people to display their feelings.

Then there is the very uncomfortable position of no longer loving someone but feeling the need to fulfill  expectations.  You celebrate the day but your heart isn't in it.  How sharp the falsehood feels on Valentine's Day.

Hopefully, this was not your day, but if it was, here's a bit of sympathy.  Because the heart does want what the heart wants no matter how one manipulates it. So, for you pretenders, here's a small poem.


Fade

As fire chokes
and sweetness burns,
as the page yellows
and the sky grays,
so too our love,
my love,
and we must
put it
away

Bridget Harwell

The 75% Rule

I believe in the 75% rule. In my book, if we can get 75% of any given desire in any given situation, we are doing quite well. Somehow the 100% standard of perfection has a way of slipping in and messing up our expectations, causing nothing but suffering. Reminding ourselves that enough is really enough can free us from that kind of needless pain.

The following has been circulating on the web and, as far as I can tell, the author is unknown. To me it articulates the essence of the 75% rule. What do you think?

“I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.

I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.

I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.

I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.

I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.

I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.

I wish you enough hello’s to get you through the final good-bye.”