I’ve never been a big fan of Valentine’s Day. Like so many other days that are deemed significant in our culture, it’s one that rattles me as perpetuating so many heteronormative myths and being nothing more than a cheap consumer charade. (Tee-hee. I’ve been itching to use ‘heteronormative’ for ages!)

What that means is that, no, unlike the ever-popular Lisa Simpson, I never received the “choo-choo-choose me” Valentine’s cards from secret admirers as a child (or teenager, or adult, for that matter). Granted, I never gave anyone a card either, but hey, at age seven I was yet to discover feminism or The Secret.

Feeling unloved is probably one of the worst feelings in the world. And I don’t think I was alone in feeling exceptionally unloved on Valentine’s Day. So why participate in a cultural event that ends up just spreading the non-love?

But here I am, a pathetic, hypocrite of an adult, quite happy to be swept along in this folly of romantic love.  On Valentine’s eve, I went searching for a special ‘love’-themed positive tune to post on this site and my V day plans include a special dinner with my love. (No, not the cat. Nooo, not my sMacBook. The other one – with two legs.) Actually, my enthusiasm for tunes of love and celebrating the day is probably more to do with “will use any excuse to eat wonderful food, guzzle champagne and dance around the house to cheesy music”.

It is true, though, that I’m a big sucker for love. In fact, it is my one value or guiding principle that has not changed over the years. For me it’s like the ultimate truth, the only reason we’re here, the singular essence of life: To live with love. And to isolate that to one day of the year just seems ridiculous.

In fact, my love attraction is so strong that whenever I’m making a tough decision, it only takes a Marianne-Williamson-moment for me to work out what I need to do. You see, I just ask myself, “What would love do?”

Now as I drag myself out from under my rock of new-age shame, let me explain why this works for me. Like so many popular songs have suggested, the world needs a lot more love. The alternative is living with fear, and although I’m pretty skilled at that, after years of giving the fear-based-life gig a red-hot go, I’d have to rate it as a pretty ineffective strategy for achieving quality of life.

So what is it about living with love that makes life a whole lot more worthwhile?

A recent paper in the journal NeuroQuantology by Antonella Vannini and Ulisse Di Corpo attempts to explain the life-giving power of love in terms of quantum mechanics.  

In their paper, Retrocausality and the Healing Power of Love, Vannini and Di Corpo draw on the work of early 20^th century mathematician, Luigi Fantappie, and suggest that there are two competing laws at play that regulate our material needs (such as food, water, shelter, etc) – the law of entropy (waves diverging) and the law of syntropy (waves converging).  Due to entropy we are always replacing lost energy through food and water, or minimising loss through shelter. Syntropy, on the other hand, is the law that sustains life. According to Fantappie, who gave syntropy its name,

“The law of life is not the law of hate, the law of force, or the law of mechanical causes; this is the law of non-life, the law of death, the law of entropy; the law which dominates life is the law of finalities, the law of cooperation towards goals which are always higher, and this is true also for the lowest forms of life. In humans this law takes the form of love.”

If we’re serious about sustaining life, then we have to “be like the atoms” and encourage convergence of energy. That is, work together toward higher goals and share the love. It also means that instead of always making rational, head-based decisions based on certainty (or our illusion thereof), we make heart-based decisions.  In true quantum physics style, they also contend that the future determines the past (retro-causality is the inverse of causality where past events causes future events). 

So when we have feelings we just can’t rationalise, like when we feel anticipation, it is the future sending us a message. And so in acting on our feelings, living with our heart, our future is determining our past.

Yup. [Back away slowly from the crazy lady…]

There’s more to the theory than that, as it deals with identity and meaning and how we connect with the environment. But I thought the stuff about love being the essential law of life was pretty neat – and way better than a tacky card and a hastily-bought box of chocolates.

I also like the theory because there’s a bit of a Taoist dichotomous balance thing going on as well; love and hate paradoxically co-exist, and the redress of hate or force is love. It also gives me insight into one of other great paradoxes of love, which was the fabulous opening line (and theme) of Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body:

            Why is the measure of love loss?

Why do we not realise how much something, or someone, means to us until it has gone? That only through absence do we recognise what we truly have. By their very nature, love and loss co-exist.

If you want a brain-melt trip into the edges of research, you can read the full paper here.

And my Valentine’s wish?  I hope all your days are filled with love.

Related posts:

1. Working toward higher goals. Sharing the love. Happy V day.
2. Valentine tune: You + Me = Love by Undisputed Truth
3. Love is everything: Jane Siberry and the art of being human

That international club of provocative thinkers, The Edge, released its 2009 Question earlier this month at its World Question Centre. 150 of the sharpest pencils in the, um, pencil-case of contemporary thought were asked:

WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?

“What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?”

Wow. I personally would hope to see a revolution in how we manage our planet’s resources so that we have clean, renewable energy. But hopefully science will also provide the evidence for us to address so many of our current woes from disease to hunger and poverty. But me-thinks that we don’t even need science to address those things, we just need a compassionate and wise civilisation…

Read what the others say eg

·      Martin Seligman on “Much Smarter People”

·      Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi on “The end of Analytic Science” [big yahoo from me]

·      Rupert Sheldrake on “The Credit Crunch for Materialism”

·      Howard Rheingold on “Social Media Literacy”

·      John Gottman on “Laboratory Earth Colonies”

·      Douglas Rushkoff on “The Discovery of Intelligent Life from Somewhere Else”

Mix it in with the other 144 contributors writing on DNA, biospheres, the brain, the universe, climate, computers, and so much more, and you have a year’s worth of brain food.

Previous years’ questions, now available in book form, are:

2008: What have you changed your mind about?

2007: What are you optimistic about?

2006: What is your dangerous idea?

2005: What do you believe is true even though we cannot prove it?

No related posts.

Or maybe it was because I just couldn’t stop laughing at the blankie that strangely resembles all my childhood nativity costumes.

The Slanket

I love this because it is such a simple idea, it is so dorky, and yet so practical, and it looks very comfy. Just think: No more 6am sub-zero shiver-fests in winter. 

Winter workwear has just moved up a notch.

:: Thanks to Neatorama

No related posts.