Valentine’s Day or Consumerism? I’m Jus’ Sayin’!!!

Valentine’s Day is here again. Whether you choose to celebrate or not, you can’t avoid the mass consumerism related to this day. Stores, even pharmacies, are decorated with red and pink hearts, as advertisements try to convince you that digging deep into your pocket is the way to express the love that resides in your heart.

Wouldn’t it be incredibly beneficial for society if we were to change the focus from the love of our lover on Valentine’s Day, to the love of all of humanity? Because really, that relationship, between each and everyone of us, beyond borders, religions, ethnicity, cultures, is not always very solid or love-filled.

Make meaningful connections in your own community or maybe half way around the world. It doesn’t matter where—bridges of understanding and love need to be built everywhere. Let go of the limited view “here” and “there” being separate and detached. That is just a mere illusion; the reality is that we are all here, sharing this same planet that we all call home.

Commit to living each day with an open heart.

What does it really mean to live with an open heart? You become open to the many kinds of love that surround you every day. You embrace it. You live for it. You let love flow through you as freely as the air that you breath, giving and receiving this endless supply of what is truly the essence that unites everything in this universe.

To me, living with an open heart enables us to be givers and receivers of a more challenging and more limitless love than that of simply loving your lover. It is a love not bound by attachment. Many times, it is the rolling up of your sleeves-ass kicking get in the game of life won’t stop for-anything because I am shining my light in this world, damn-it kind of love.

Living with an open heart does come with risk; you are going to feel things deeper much deeper than those who go through their lives shoulders hunched forward, heads staring toward the ground.

So open up! Feel the joys and sorrow, the highs and lows, surely, this is what it means to live wholly. With this energy, find something to commit to this month that you have never done before.

We must all continue to do our part in extending a hand to those in need. We are all connected and as we lift up individuals we also lift up our entire community.

Our options are invisibility, complicity, or resistance, and black rage is a clarion call for standing on the correct side of the color line, for reaping the collective rewards of justice … We choose resistance.”

Let’s channel our sorrow and immobility into power and action. Let’s step into solidarity to fight for the humanity and civil rights of all hyphenated Americans and communities. Let’s be the change we want to see in the world.

May God bless all humanity and heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.