So that love lasts after flowers and chocolate

Below the French publication in English (or French)

This year, without giving in to the craziness around Valentine's Day, my heart and my mind have come together to reflect on what is essential in love.

As my age brings me two-thirds of the way through, I am gripped by the absolute necessity that my actions be authentic in order to create value. Anything that feeds on appearances, on superficiality, revolts me, and without compromise, I neither want nor can be satisfied with tepid emotions.

Don't imagine that I have lost my candor, my lightness of being, my taste for frivolity and unspeakable pleasures. In love, I keep intact my unreserved appetite for romantic expression. However, beyond the éclat at the moment of love, I still have my demanding lucidity.

What lingers on the morning of February 15th after the scent of the roses, the chocolate bubbling, and the exultation of bodies? Since, upon waking up, everyday reality resumes, how will the enchantment endure so that, over the next 364 days, the taste for desire and the desire for the other remains?

Don't expect a universal method from me. The subject is far too complex, too intimate for a single answer to be worthwhile.

Each love born from the mixture of emotions and feelings of either of our duos, has its own dynamic that results from the sensitivity, will, creativity, skill and desire of two unique beings, otherwise so similar, each in search of the same essential: shared happiness.

There is no real rule for love to last longer than the season of roses but understanding that true love cannot flourish without compassion and that compassion is nourished by courage should help cure many of our love ailments.

I understood that to love another again and again, one must first love oneself in one's greatness as much as in one's weaknesses. To know how to love, one needs a compassionate heart.

Without compassion, how can one recognize oneself in another when the kaleidoscope of differences manifests itself in this being whom one love blindly so deeply; when astonishment replaces irritation; and when doubt insidiously engenders the need for distance?

When compassion is armed with courage, one can tenaciously persevere. Each one preserves what is essential, learning from experiencing the clumsy sometimes expressions of difference.

It takes courage to educate oneself and practice compassion. Nothing is ever set or finished; everything remains impermanent, humanly imperfect. But it is in this rewarding exercise that the magic happens.

By striving to love another, one reveals oneself to oneself. We polish ourselves by rubbing against the rough edges of each other. And so the joy of Valentine's Day persists, with its disappointments, its ups and downs, but also its bursts of shared joy. Life together stretches on, punctuated by chocolatey and flowery moments. This is truly what I believe, having learned it from experience. I'm sharing it with you, raw, so that you and I can learn to love each other too...