HANH TAT

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Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! So for this day of romance, I thought I’d share a little poem I wrote a while back when I was in the throes of longing after someone and it’s titled simply, ‘That Thing’, and it goes like this:

~o~

What is it that thing, that thing that makes me feel, having been so sure of myself, like I suddenly don’t know where I end and you begin?

You know, that thing that causes me to see you in the face of a random stranger passing by simply because their nose bears a remote and fleeting resemblance to yours.

What is that thing that suddenly gives meaning to a previously innocuous word solely based on the simple merit that you’d uttered it once in a unique way?

It’s on the tip of my tongue, that thing, that thing that inexplicably gives your voice residency in my head and causes spontaneous and childish smiles to appear upon my face.

Yes, I think I remember now. I think I heard they call it love. Or is it lust? Maybe it’s a bit of both. I’m not entirely sure. Is anyone really, entirely sure? Hmm, I wonder.

Either way, it’s a curious thing. Yes, it’s very curious, yet ever so wonderful, that thing.

~o~

So that was just something a little lighthearted, but to go deeper, I wanted to invite everyone to widen their concept of love, because often love is confined to and conflated with romantic love because of Hollywood movies and romance novels.

But if we were to give love its widest scope possible so that we include not just partners and their loved ones, but we also include ourselves, those that we know and those that we don’t know and the whole of humanity. And if we gave love its broadest definition possible so that it’s not just that feeling we have when we are holding a loved one but we use it as an umbrella term to include all of the loving ways of being that there can be such as kindness and compassion, generosity and forgiveness, love becomes virtually unbounded and we can apply it to absolutely every area of our lives.

And so on this Valentine’s Day, whether you’re partnered or not, I wish you a day full of love, in all manner of ways.