love, love, love

I think that Valentine's Day is sort of a funny day. At least in the United States, it's all about conversation hearts and Hallmark cards and chocolates and heart-shaped pizzas and stuff like that. But it always makes me think, "Why all of this hoop-la about love only on February 14?" It sounds cliche but shouldn't we be telling people that we love them every day...not just on Valentine's Day? I don't mean to be "bah humbug" about Valentine's Day. I'm glad that we do stop at least once a year to really think about the people we love and tell them that! But it seems to me that there really aren't enough hours in this one day to tell all of our loved ones just how much we appreciate, value, care about, and love them! At least that's how I feel about it...way too much love to be contained in 24 hours.
And that made me think about this poem that I read once called "So Much Happiness" (Naomi Shihab Nye). I could substitute "happiness" with "love" and maybe it would accurately express how I feel about the overwhelming amount of love in the world to be shared. "So much love..." let's get to it, folks!

"So Much Happiness"
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs
or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records...

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.