Not Easy Peasy Love

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© Victoria Evangelina Belyavskaya

15.02.2008

“Love is too large, too deep ever to be truly

understood or measured or limited

within the framework of words.”

The Road Less Traveled

by M. Scott Peck

Hearts of all shapes and sizes are all over London. There are hearts even on a poster in the dirty

window of one of the pubs: “Hate the Valentine’s Holiday?? Anticipate a lonely dreadful evening

in a company of coupled friends? Tired of running all over looking for a date? Come and join

us.”

Many of my friends here in London are running all over in search of a date. Why is it that so

many young, extremely good looking and successful Londoners have no one special to share the

romantic evening with?

Is the answer in the question: they are good looking and successful because they have that free

time on their hands to go to the gym and put in additional hours of work when they return back

home?

This is in deep contrast to the belief so widely accepted just a short time ago: to have asuccessful work life one must have a successful family life, i.e. balance between the two. Today,

the weights are on the side of the career. With the growing freedom in every aspect of one’s life

it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish true love and even to believe that such a thing

exists at all.

Yet, “love is everywhere.” Among my acquaintances it has become the norm to end phone calls

and good-bye kisses with “Love you” and type “luv u” in the last line of emails and ‘Skype’

chats. It is hip and cool to be loving.

It is not to say that the emergence of the easy peasy ‘love’ word has just happened now. Really,

“i-love-you”, these one-four-three letters have been around for quite some time and do in factlook pretty worn out. Their ever-growing easy popularity makes the struggle to express the deep

feeling especially confusing. How do you make sure that you do not sound ‘easy-peasy’? One of

the solutions is to say nothing at all. It works for as long as your partner does not have the need

to have a sound verbal reassurance of the feeling. Otherwise, your care of the fragile feeling is

going to be as misinterpreted as it possibly can be.

No gender discrimination, but generally the girls are those who need to hear it… over and over

and over again. We drink life’s essentials from the reassuring echo in the well of “I love you”s, “I

miss you”s and “I want you”s.

Masculine excuses “I am not good at expressing feelings”, “oh, it is only girls who care” and soon won’t do. If you keep silent on St. Valentine’s (and on any other day, in fact), do consider that

for every man scared of saying “I love you” or not knowing just how to distinguish his feeling



from the easy peasy sound of ‘luv u’ there will be a man, able to genuinely look into a female’s

eyes and say “I love you”. Or to write a little sweet note to the one who is far away, a simple

Word document attached to an empty email with the title “Doc.1” She will open it to find a little

red heart surrounded with the words, through which she sees the soul of the man who wrote

them. And she will know that these “love you” words are not the easy peasy ones. She will feel

these are genuine.

I have often heard men blame their dysfunctional families for not providing examples of

expressing love. Worse than that, I have often talked to girlfriends and wives of those men, who

are fully understandable, and sympathetic to the ‘poor guys’ for their emotional handicap. Let’s

be honest: I myself have been “understanding” and “supportive” of such men. But guess what…

not receiving what we, girls, are entitled to by our birthright we settle for less and indeed start

looking for more excuses in the ‘dis-functionality’ of our families. I had a good talk about it with

a girlfriend of mine, a charming beautiful lady. “We all have dysfunctional families,” she

concluded, playing with a ball of candy wrappers. “Let’s sit and blame them till the end of life.”

But it is one’s will to love and learn to love and learn to express love.

Think about the quote from The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck: “Everyone in our culture

desires to some extent to be loving, yet many are not in fact loving. I therefore conclude that

desire to love is not itself love. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will-namely, both an

intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love. No

matter how much we may think we are loving, if we are in fact not loving, it is because we have

chosen not to love and therefore do not love despite our good intentions. On the other hand,

whenever we do actually exert ourselves in the cause of spiritual growth, it is because we have

chosen to do so. The choice to love has been made.”

Today, surrounded with huge hearts, flowers and laughing youth: have you made your choice?

Considering that the St. Valentine’s holiday comes from the memory of a soulful priest who kept

holding marriage ceremonies at the times when Emperor Claudius II had forbidden them in an

attempt to involve more people in the army, this day is not about narrow-minded easy peasy

love; nor is it just a fun holiday for school kids to exchange self-made cards; nor is it an

obligation for a man to show up with flowers and a restaurant booking.

Yet it is a day to hold hands of your loved ones, look into their eyes and feel at ease and at peace

with yourself. The words will come. And only then your love words won’t be taken for granted.

And you will know what to work on.

“Love is effortful,” says Scott Peck. Yet hard work is not commonly associated with love. “Thelove is not there if everything is going so rough,” they say. How many of us realize that learning

to love is an experience of spiritual growth needed for the human development?

Let’s celebrate the St. Valentine’s day. Let’s fill our hearts with love without politicizing it over

and over again: a Muslim women’s separatist group in Indian-held Kashmir known as

Dukhtaran-e-Millat or ‘Daughters of the Faith, has urged the population not to celebrate

Valentine’s Day because it is un-Islamic and promotes “immorality.” The Rev. Thomas J.

Euteneuer, President of Human Life International responded to the attempt by condom

manufacturers and the abortion industry “to pervert St. Valentines Day” by giving out condoms

to students. His point is that condoms break and the abortion industry get its money through

performing more services.



St. Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love and not one night stands. Though it is up to you to

choose.

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Not Easy Peasy Love