Happy Valentine's Day! Let's talk about love, baby...

I'm reading On Beauty by Zadie Smith. It's a family saga with themes of race and class, the clashing of cultures, intellectuality, and of course, love, of all kinds -- family love, self love, interracial love, career love, romantic love, lusty love. The characters are so very human -- flawed, conflicted, their ways of looking at the world at once endearing, hilarious, and frustrating. Their internal dialogue makes for some of the greatest lines in the book. Take this one, said by a character who's been betrayed by her husband and feels unappreciated by her family: 

"The greatest lie ever told about love is that it will set you free."

Think about that on this grossly commercial, Hallmark holiday that's devolved the symbolism of love to kitsch, and that would make cupid want to shoot himself with his own arrow!

Gleeful cynicism aside, I find so much value in that line because it prompts one to consider freedom and love, two things that I believe go hand in hand. To love is to bond without being bound, to connect without grasping.

Any relationship (romantic, platonic, familial) comes with commitment and compromise -- these are choices we freely make, and in the name of love. They're different from expectations and obligations, which are more about ideas of what love "should" look like. We become attached to these ideas instead of being fully engaged -- not just in our relationships, but in our own lives as well. We're taken out of the present, out of the realm of love. To love wholly, we must be present. To be present, we must let go of should/could/once was. In letting go, we find freedom, the freedom to love fully. Full circle/whole heart.