Valentine's Day has been described as tacky, smarmy, rude, damaging, evil. Even those who're in love on Valentine's Day don't seem to like it all that much, except maybe for the goodies. I'm in love, and I don't like it all that much. After eighteen years of marriage, I still don't know what to get my husband, if I should get something for my husband. And I dislike shopping. I dislike choosing. I'm not known for my wonderful gifts.

The problem is, what Valentine's Day delivers most is pressure. Either pressure to find someone to have Valentine's Day with, or pressure to be romantic with the man you have - as if there weren't better things to do.

So I pretend. I pretend this is fun. And then I realize anything is fun if you think it is, and anything is yucky if you're crabby about it, and I just feel like being crabby about this. So I can imagine how many men might feel. And then I realize I'm wrong. I'm just dead wrong about the whole thing.

As I said last issue, men like giving girls presents. They do. And my problem is I'm uncomfortable being on the receiving end. I worry about what to give back just because I'm weirded out by a whole day devoted to the idea of giving to me!

So, let's pretend something else. Let's pretend we're in love with everything. With ourselves, with our mates, our dates, the man across the movie theater lobby. Does it feel good, or does it feel like a lie?

If you answered It's a lie - there's no man in my life at all! Rori, you're mad. Or My husband barely stops working long enough to even notice I'm in the room, except for Valentine's Day, because he has to, you're not alone. The hardest job in any of our lives is believing that what we see is not necessarily what there is.

I don't have love, what do I do about it? is why I hold classes, why we get together to talk. My man is standing in his slippers in the living room, or there's that cute man buying frozen pizzas, but I don't have love because he'll never give it to me. Or I won't really want it from him. Except for Valentine's Day. Maybe. I won't get loved. I want to believe, but I can't. I don't.

I'm all about undoing this. Undoing what we believe is real is our first challenge on the way to getting love. Since we never can really know what is going to happen in the next moment, is the statement I won't get love true? How would you know whether or not it's true? What if it isn't true? What if you are going to get love, and pretty fast, too? If in the blink of an eye we suddenly realize we do have it, or we will have it, the first thought may be Whoa - what a lot of time I just wasted assuming I'm not going to get love. I just wasted about five days assuming that because that fellow I had that great time with last week hasn't called me back, or because my husband seems intent on pretending I'm not exactly, really here, I won't get love. If it's a lie, then it's exhausting to hold up that lie.

How do we turn this around? How do we all of a sudden see love, believe in love, get love, if we don't believe it's there for us? As a famous sporting equipment provider says - Just do it.

The kind of depression, anxiety, blues, mopyness, melancholy, rage that comes and goes (not the kind that comes to live with us day and night - please, I encourage anyone living with the blue

s to see one of the alternative practitioners I've featured here) comes from our deep core beliefs about ourselves, from experiences so far in our history we can't remember, and from our day to day practice. Imagine trying to undo years of practicing pain by practicing faith. If we were able to stop practicing pain on a daily basis, and yet it took a day to undo every day we've practiced pain, we'd be spending our lives slowly undoing our lives. That seems so dreadfully long. It seems like a lot of work.

Like dieting - if I can't get into that dress tomorrow, I might as well have the hot fudge sundae and forget about the dress - undoing pain seems like an all-or-nothing job. It seems so daunting, love seems so far away, we stop just a few steps into the journey and resist continuing on until we re-convince ourselves it's just not ever going to be really there. I attract men who are unavailable, I attract older men, I just can't seem to meet men, there aren't any decent men, all the good men are taken, he's just set in his ways, he's just clueless, he'll never change is way easier to say to ourselves than whoops - I'm headed down the wrong road here, better change course.

You're going to have to trust me here - changing course is easier than going on with the lie.

Don't make it hard. Don't analyze and process, even if it's your personality style. Just stop yourself wherever you are down the road, sit quiet for a minute, then turn around. Swivel. Put your back to the road that's marked No Love. You'll just have to have faith, even though you can't see it, that there's plenty of love to be had. And even if you don't know where the road marked Plenty of Love is, even if you have no idea where to turn first, just turn your back to the lie of No Love and step forward.

In an instant you will feel better. Imagine ahead of you is the place marked Love. Imagine that place starts where you're standing. You can have love if you want love. And even if you're not certain at this moment that you really do want love, if you like, I'll want it for you. I'll hold your place in the place marked Love.

It's like believing in Tinkerbell. Like believing in fairies. Even with all evidence to the contrary, with images of grief, disaster, stupidity and pain thrown into our faces minute by minute, think about the everyday images of love, peace, harmony, friendship that we're not even looking at, glorious images of beautiful moments that might be right in front of our faces. We can be as much a part of love as we are a part of pain.

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