THE BIGGER PICTURE: I have a lot of very precious memories of love. The first one, although I didn't recognise it for some time, is told to me by my mother.
Because my older sister was a breach baby, I was to be born by scheduled Caesarean section (as per Canadian hospital policy of the time). My mother was prepared. She had been here before. She was anaesthetised from her waist down, and so was conscious for the procedure.
Through a twist of fate, one light bulb was gone from the star-shaped giant lights that adorned the operating room ceiling. In this way, it became a large mirror. Through this, my mother watched me being born.
It seems a strange story to tell - short, simple, somewhat technical and hardly romantic - but the significance comes in the way she tells it. She is always truly delighted. She lights up with genuine joy.
It wasn't just intrigue (for those who can manage it) with the odd experience of watching one's self being operated on. Indeed, it took me some years to let myself notice that she felt an actual thrill to be there for me as I was born.
As she tells it, there are no comments of pain or struggle for recovery afterwards. Only happiness . . . that she could see me, that I had arrived. She loves me, and she tells the story this way.
For as long as I can remember, my mother has been my most committed Valentine. I know this is framed in the context of our culture. Being Indian, we understood a tradition of arranged marriage, which simultaneously means a void of fussing around "boy/girlfriends", "coupling-off" and those first approaches that a "Valentine" might make. From the very beginning, love took on a much broader, and perhaps deeper, character.
When I was a child, every morning on February 14th, I would awaken to see my room somewhat organised, the curtains parted to let the sunshine in (something one could nearly always count on in Alberta) and, on the top of my dresser centrally placed, something that didn't belong there. A token. A figurine of a penguin carrying a balloon, or a porcelain boot with a heart and the words Love You painted on in script and a note in my mum's handwriting saying the same, with extra exclamation marks and happy faces the way only she makes them.
Every year I woke up a little surprised (how had my room been invaded and tidied while I slept), a little delighted (a present left for me) and a little disappointed (the present was never something that suited me, nothing you could do anything with, and often a bit embarrassing).
But, every year, my mother let me wake up on this day without a question in my heart: I was loved. I mattered. It meant something to her to show it to me.
My early associations with Valentine's Day are of security and belonging - the confirmation from a parent that I brought joy to the world. This became the essence of my understanding of being loved, and I have never successfully narrowed my perception to value only a relationship with a partner or spouse. Nevertheless, the world at large gives us other ideas.
Currently, one's "love-ability" is judged by whether we are "one" of an intimate pairing. As a result, some people will wake up today feeling thrilled with themselves because they qualify under these terms and can enjoy some celebrations.
Others will awaken feeling worse than they did a day before because they are "alone" - hollow and absent. Something about how we create Valentine's Day gives it a power (not available to any other day) to make us feel like we are somehow not good enough.
Partner or no partner, every person is loveable, and everyone is wonderfully attractive. We may have forgotten, and so no longer show it, but our problems are not inherent to who we are. For each one of us, there is the possibility for love in every corner of our lives with every person that we meet. And, there is a real possibility to eliminate loneliness.
Our perceptions of love should not be defined by boundaries. It is far more powerful than that - far greater than sex (the main factor distinguishing a "couple" from our other relationships). To touch someone's heart is profoundly moving.
When we become people who can engage with this - find love in ourselves, share and celebrate it - then we become people who can attract and create love anywhere. With this ability, the prospect of loneliness diminishes.
And so, finally, there is a real difference between loneliness and grief. While both are deeply affecting, grief is not born from having felt lonely or unloved. It comes from having been deeply connected, and then experiencing hurt or loss.
We grieve because we love, and those among us who are grieving need our love. They need us to reach them and stay with them as they go through their grief. And, we need them to come through it, for they are the ones who might really teach us how to love.
Shalini Sinha has established Forward Movement, a social justice clinic where she practises life coaching, the Bowen Technique, and is training in nutritional medicine.