February has less days than its counterparts, with its days of 28 or 29, but its days are filled with many celebrations of holidays and historical events, including one holiday tucked right in the middle that is most often associated with love and romance -- February 14th, Valentine’s Day.

Ah, true love!
Many say love is
true only if it is
given from the
heart, and then
there is no doubt.
It just feels so
right, so wonderfully,
marvelously right.

Love has many different meanings to all different types of people. And there are many stages of love at different ages and many different types of love. So, the wishes, the dreams, the displays of sentiment, and the caring that are brought into focus (or kept locked in the hearts) on Valentine’s Day are as varied as the varying levels of existing love. And their energy harmonizes quite nicely to make for a very nice celebration of love on February 14th.

In the midst of the different levels of love, there seems to be a commonly felt fondness for romantic true love, though many think of it as a short-lived experience. Not necessarily so. According to an article in the January 4, 2009 issue of the The Sunday Times (UK), entitled “Scientists Discover True Love,” a team from Stony Brook University in New York scanned the brains of couples who had been together for 20 years and compared them with those of new lovers and found that about one in 10 of the mature couples exhibited the same chemical reactions when shown photographs of their loved ones as people commonly do in the early stages of a relationship. The results showed that previous research indicating “fracture points” in relationships of 12-15 months, 3 years, and the infamous 7-year itch did not necessarily apply to everyone. The brain scans supported the claim people were making that they were still in love after an average of 21 years. Maggie Scarf indicates in her book September Songs (A description and PLACE HOLD link for this book is found in the following pages of this section.): “Since the beginning of the twentieth century, thirty years have been added to human life expectancy -- an unprecedented event that has forever changed our long-term relationships...” If that’s the case, people have even more years to pursue or enjoy the experience of long-lived romantic true love. How nice.

Speaking of love...

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