Cultivating Love

It seems appropriate to talk about love on Valentine's Day so that's what I'm doing. I don't mean the kind of love they talk about on Hallmark cards, or rather, not that kind of love exclusively.

Let me explain.

Yesterday an older man came into my workplace with a question I knew the answer to. He didn't have an appointment and I was in the middle of something else, so I heaved a sigh filled with some mixture of self-pity and self-righteousness and went and had a seat with him. His question was a relatively easy one and he was a nice man. We were done with our meeting quickly. I said nice to meet you and shook his hand and headed back to my office. But he wasn't done talking yet. He wanted to talk about Stress. I could feel my eyes start to glaze over as I nodded politely. I talk about stress a lot. I needed to get back to work. But then he said something that got me. He said, "when you really get rid of all your stress it is an amazing feeling. People who are truly free of stress are amazingly happy and full of love."

Holy crap. He was right. Here I was getting annoyed at a perfectly nice man who was only taking up about 5 minutes of my time. Is my time really that precious? Am I really too important or too rushed or too stressed to listen? I'm so not. So I unglazed my eyes and smiled and listened. It felt awesome. Love feels so much nicer than impatience.

I wish I could claim that I am entirely free of stress - that I have let it all go and I am full of only pure love. But I am clearly not. Even on V-Day. But I'm working on it. Its amazing what a difference it made just to remember that for a second. I went back into my office, put my feet up on my desk, and did my breathing for 10 minutes.

So in celebration of Valentine's Day, today's stress relief tip is to remember how nice love feels. Not necessarily love for a significant other, but love for everything. Love for the person who is sitting appallingly close to you on the subway. And love for the mittens that are keeping your hands warm when its super cold out. Love for the cold!

Happy St. Valentine's Day and thank you to the stranger who walked into my office and reminded me to cultivate love.