For anyone still planning to celebrate Valentine’s Day after the devastating news about Brad and Jen I would advise against Mike Nichols’ recent movie, Closer, although it could be just the thing if you are looking to feel better about your own relationship - whatever its state, or you wish to be reminded that being single has much to recommend it. In the film, four gorgeous actors give us two hours of love as obsession and possession, sex as conquest and commerce and, inevitably, betrayal. I find it a bit ridiculous that the movie has been described as, “an uncompromisingly honest look at modern relationships,” as if obsession, possession, sex, power and betrayal are 21st century inventions and it just occurred to Hollywood to make a movie about them.

Neither do I recommend Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks movies, where adorable people in beautiful apartments that would be a financial stretch for dual-income brain surgeons fall deeply in love because they both like New York in the autumn. (Maybe that’s what was wrong with my first marriage – I preferred spring.) It’s not that I am cynical about romance or its accoutrements. I love chocolate (dark, very dark) and flowers, and am as susceptible to flirtation and courtship as any self respecting Jane Austin heroine. I have a play list on my computer devoted to the genre ‘croon and pine,’ being temperamentally disposed toward grand passion and maudlin, tortured despair. But my wish for this Valentine’s Day would be to hit the pause button on the parade of candles and beach walks, jewelry advertisements and attractive soul mates, and instead take a collective moment to marvel at our capacity to love.

It is difficult to write about love directly. It is at once too much, like looking at the sun, and too elusive, like trying to get an errant eggshell out of a bowl of egg whites. Instead, we tell stories and paint pictures and compose symphonies, or rely on the imagery of poetry. Talking about it is a bit like describing the experience of having children to someone who doesn’t – you tell about the dirty diapers and the loss of sleep and the teenage dramas, and maybe you also say it is wonderful, but you do not say that you fall in love with your children in a way that makes you understand the expressions “give my left arm for him” and “lay down my life for her.” You are shy to reveal that when your child was born you discovered what it meant to cry for joy and the animal creed that you must never get between a mother and her young. You don’t know how to describe a love that simply exists; one that is not dependent upon notions of getting your needs met or good communication or compatibility. It is impossible to explain that the conditions for your happiness have changed forever.

Our heart is the gatekeeper between life and death; perhaps this is why it is such a powerful icon, freighted with our greatest longings and the things that make us most devastatingly human. We tell someone to have a heart when we desire sympathy and compassion, we refer to a broken heart when speaking of intense emotional pain and we talk of having a change of heart when something feels wrong and we must choose a different, often more difficult course. We speak of being heartfelt when our feelings run deep, of having a heavy heart and crying our heart out when we are grieving. When we act out of love for our fellow beings, we say our heart is in the right place, and when someone is in despair and needs great courage, we tell them to take heart - the word courage comes from coeur, the French word for heart. It is the universal symbol of love.

In contrast, we give the mind short shrift when it comes to love, although surely it plays a far greater role in determining the successes and failures of our relationships than a sophisticated pump, no matter how perfect a metaphor. What we believe affects everything we do. Reflecting our fondness for oversimplification, we refer to people as ‘head people’ or ‘heart people,’ when in truth we are all composite beings; thinking, feeling and responding according to our own strange brew. Consider that compassion - the hallmark of our hearts - is most engaged and evoked when we understand a thing fully, and the problems of poverty and human suffering could not be addressed without the best thinking we can employ. Besides, I agree with author Gabrielle Roth, who wrote in Maps to Ecstasy that the position of the mind is the most significant position in lovemaking. Imagine if we stopped our partners to say, “Oh, hold on a second, my mind needs adjusting … okay, go ahead … no wait, now it’s wandered off … um … okay.”

When we fell in love for the first time and our parents told us darkly that relationships were a lot of work and not just wine and roses, perhaps this was their way of telling us about the dirty diapers when they wanted to tell us about the possibility of a love that takes your breath away. (Or perhaps they were miserable and hoping to save us from the same, but you catch my drift.) Our culture has focused a lot on the theme of looking for love, as if it were a state of perfection requiring a Petri dish and precise laboratory conditions; or being ready for love, as if it were something one could bone up on in the library, or carry an emergency preparedness kit for in case it struck without warning. To me, these miss the whole point. The point is that we grab our coats and hats and set out to love – someone, anyone and damn the torpedoes - with our hearts, minds, spleens and elbows.