Love and the Art of Kindness

With Valentine’s Day coming up and Random Acts of Kindness week upon us, our thoughts here at Zefyr have turned to love and the many ways it finds expression.

Valentine’s Day has traditionally been a day for the celebration of romantic love. St Valentine for whom Valentine’s day is named was famous for being imprisoned for conducting marriages for soldiers who were forbidden to marry. And so he became the the patron saint of romance. What is less known about him are his other amazing acts of compassion and kindness - he healed the daughter of his jailer and helped many persecuted people in his time.

It is these kinds of compassionate acts that are also being celebrated this week in Random Acts of Kindness Week 2015. RAK week is a project that was started by the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation in a bid to promote kindness and compassion globally. "Kindness is contagious," says their website, http://www.randomactsofkindness.org

It’s probably no accident that RAK week falls on the same week as Valentine Day because it’s also about love. In fact RAK2015 has made us reconsider Valentine’s Day and what it means to us. It seems so limiting to only celebrate one kind of love on this day. Romantic love is lovely but it’s not the only kind of love. Love in its purest form is about expansion and it is without limits. Let’s make Valentine’s Day limitless too.

Here at Zefyr we are going to raise the flag and make Valentine’s Day a day about love in all its beautiful shapes. 

So let’s all reclaim Valentine’s Day from romantic love and make it a day about all kinds of love.

Let’s take our mums out for lunch to tell them how much we love them.

Let’s help a stranger with a heavy bag.

Let’s write a message to a friend telling them how much they mean to us.

Let’s plant a tree.

Let’s take some time and do something lovely for ourselves.

All of this is love.

Let’s make Valentine’s Day something new, something better, something about love in all it wonderful and weird shapes. Make your own best Valentine’s Day and make it with love.