Today is a day that we celebrate love. Ideally every day should be that day. And although Hallmark would like us to think it’s just for those gooey-batty-eyed wuffers, I think there’s a lot more to it. For starters, Oxford Dictionary has about 7 inches of definitions delving into love. Love comes in many shapes and sizes, highs and lows, flavours, tastes, memories and sounds. It can be adorned in cliques or decked out in leather. It can be childlike, explosive or expressed in absolute silence. It can be as solid as chocolate, scrambled like an egg and it can shatter like glass. Many wear it on their sleeve, it’s in the air and apparently, it helps make the world go round. It comes in a kaleidoscope of colours from petal pink and fire engine red to black and navy blue. It’s something we all want to be in, and yet, it’s already in us. And although you can love yourself, and I mean that in more ways than one, I think love is best shared…like most things in life.

I love forests and fairies and I love potato pancakes with sour cream. I love my pets, my friends, my pink cowgirl boots, black licorice, squirrels, Pinky, Elly, Tuna, Charlie, Sadie, Alfie and Robert Downey Jr.  Clearly there are a million degrees of intensity when it comes to love and loving things and people. Sometimes it’s even really hard to love – like pickles for instance – but in the great scheme of life, I believe you can never say never and there’s a reason for the seasoning, even when we don’t like how it tastes. I’m lucky in love and feel extremely privileged to have experienced great loves and great love losses. And it has truly only been through those haves and have nots that I have figured out what real love is.

I use to think that love was so easily defined – you know “there-theres” from Mom, an invitation to the back seat of Russell Wangursky’s station wagon, romantic gestures, decent and indecent proposals, some form of white frock with token digging and doing till death did you part. But I don’t think that anymore.

I believe love is about patience, trust, surrender and compromise. I think love is incredibly rare and equally strange. I also believe it is so much more about giving then receiving. I think love needs to be handled with the utmost of care and respect and never be taken for granted. Love is a touch, a look, an energy and a way of being and if you have some, treasure it like gold but choose to share it freely. It’s uncontrollable and indefinable. It’s contagious and all consuming.  It is light and it is dark.  It just is. And if you believe in it, it will be yours.

So whether you choose to love your pickle, pringles or pet iguana; your parents,  partner in crime or even those fabulous red come fuck me pumps in the shop window …embrace it, open your heart, free your mind and create a space to let the magic in. Because love is everything and it’s everywhere.