Hi everyone

So it is Valentine's Day.  I regard this holiday as the chocolate holiday.  I finally got rid of all the Christmas candy so it is time for new. 

But aside from the advertising for jewelry, chocolate, flowers, and cards...this is also a holiday to celebrate LOVE.

Love comes in many forms.  There is romantic love.  But there is also love for one's children, parents, friends, and pets.  So if you are not in a romantic relationship this Valentine's Day, don't fret, because there is a lot of other types of love to go around.

One of the curious things about love is how many definitions there are of one simple word.

For example some writers put love on a pedastal:

• "All Love is sweet. Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever."   Percy Bysshe Shelley
  
  
• "Harmony is pure love, for love is a concerto."  Lope de Vega
  
  
• "One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love."
  Sophocles

But some...don't think very highly of love:

This thing they call love
It's gonna make you cry

I've had the blues
The reds and the pinks
One thing for sure

(Love stinks)
Love stinks yeah yeah
(Love stinks)

Lyrics to "Love Stinks" as sung by the J. Geils Band

Love doesn't sound too good by these quotes...

• "There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel."
  Anthony Trollope
  
  
• "Yes! you are the ruin--the ruin--the ruin--of me. I have no resources in myself, I have no confidence in myself, I have no government of myself when you are near me or in my thoughts. And you are always in my thoughts now. I have never been quit of you since I first saw you. Oh, that was a wretched day for me! That was a wretched, miserable day!"
  Charles Dickens
  
  
• "To love someone is to isolate him from the world, wipe out every trace of him, dispossess him of his shadow, drag him into a murderous future. It is to circle around the other like a dead star and absorb him into a black light." -Jean Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies

Now it is your turn.  What does love mean for you?  Feel free to give your definition of romantic love or other types of love.  We talk a lot about love and relationships here on our depression site but we seldom talk about what love means.  So here is your chance.  Talk to us...we are listening!

And Happy Valentine's Day everyone!