It's a love thang...

A belated happy Valentine's Day! Earlier in the week I, perhaps foolishly, spent a chunk of my Valentine's Day chatting to Dr Savva. We recorded a couple of podcasts exploring 'love'. Louie, being the efficient person that he is (and because he has bugger all else to do... joke, Louie, joke*), uploaded these quickly. You can listen on iTunes here (episodes 17 and 18).

As I found myself in a room with a whiteboard (gotta love a whiteboard!), I made a few notes:

 

*He really does have bugger all else to do.

Lucky in love

If you were looking for some kind of expert opinion on love then I guess you might go searching in the words of philosophers, poets, and songwriters. And with good reason, as love in all its guises has been the domain of such thinkers and writers for millennia (with perhaps Huey Lewis and the News' The Power of Love being the obvious pinnacle of such endeavours?).  I doubt psychologists would feature highly on your list of people to turn to for an expert opinion on this topic. And I can understand why. Psychologists' track record for casting light on love has not been strong, tending to focus instead on the psychology of interpersonal attraction rather than the more slippery concept of love. (Notable exceptions are perhaps Robert Sternberg with his Triangular Theory of Love, and more recently Barbara Fredrickson's take on 'love' as micro-moments of shared positive emotion.)

It therefore seems a little odd that I sit here, as a self-confessed psychologist, writing about love on that most romantic (!) of days, Valentine's Day. Especially as I am not even one of those psychologists to have researched the psychology of love (or even the psychology of interpersonal attraction). So why am I writing this? And why are you reading it? Well, one topic I have spent time studying is the psychology of luck, and there may be a few things one can draw from that research that have some bearing on how we go about finding that special person with whom we might fall in love. 

What it comes down to is this. So much of what happens in our lives is due to luck. And by that I mean include chance, happenstance, fortune, unplanned events, whatever you like to call it. Luck plays a central part in most (if not all) of the important (and the not so important) things in life. And this includes the people you meet. From whom you happened to sit next to at school, to whom happened to live near you when you grew up, to whom happened to go to the same college or university as you, to whom happened to be in that pub the same night you happened to pop in there for a drink or two. This might seem obvious, and it might seem trivial, but an awareness of how much of this is beyond our control highlights how meeting our ideal partner, our 'soulmate' if you like, is luck of the draw. Or, if you prefer, it is fated. Either way, there is not much you can do about it. Or is there?

It may sound a little bleak to say that finding love is all down to luck, especially if today you find the doormat rather bereft of cards from secret admirers! But let's not be so hasty... the flip-side is you're better off accepting this is how it is, relaxing into it, and believing the right person will find their way to you all in good time. Whether you believe in fate or not, it is likely that adopting this kind of perspective will mean you worry less about meeting Mr. or Ms. Right, which will have an impact on how you come across to others. This approach will also mean you are more open to possibilities, and therefore open to the idea of meeting that special someone when you least expect it.

So relax. Believe you will find someone when the time is right. And don't go searching for it. By all means widen your social network and take opportunities to meet new people when you can, but don't do these things with the direct intention of meeting your life partner. Do it because you want to and because you enjoy meeting new people. It may well be that the love of your life finds you in this way, or you may find you were living next door to them all along! 

Happy Valentine's Day!

Suggested reading

Fredrickson, B. L. (2013). Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become. NY: Hudson Street Press.

Sternberg, R. L., & Weis, K. (Eds.) (2006). The New Psychology of Love. Yale University Press.

Wiseman, R. (2004). The Luck Factor. London: Arrow.

True love

True love is like ghosts,
which everybody talks about
and few have seen.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Happy Valentine's Day.

It is written

The Star: Inspiration and guidance; you have clarity of purpose and great potential now. The water symbolizes creativity and its flow, memory. As the past and the present flow together, so past experiences give you the wisdom to make a dream come true. This is a nurturing card, showing that you are tending your garden well. Ideas flourish as you create fertile conditions for success and happiness.

One of the many nice things about visiting Rachel’s parents for the weekend is that Rachel and I sometimes get the chance to go out on our own while Nana and Grandpa babysit. Tonight we managed to escape to the cinema to watch Slumdog Millionaire. We didn’t know too much about the film beforehand apart from having seen the trailer last week and it being recommended to us by a friend. We were also aware that it had won a few Golden Globes and has been nominated for a million Oscars (well, ten).

In the opening minutes of the film the words appear on screen:

Jamal Malik is one question away from winning 20 million rupees.
How did he do it?

A: He cheated
B: He's lucky
C: He’s a genius
D: It is written

The answers A, B and C fade from the screen, leaving the final answer, “D: It is written”.

The film tells the story of how Jamal got to this point and how his experiences growing up in the slums of Mumbai gave him clues to the answers he would eventually be asked on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? It’s an excellent film about love and destiny, and perhaps an appropriate film for today given the Star indicating how the past and present flow together, so that past experiences give the wisdom to make a dream come true.

Anyway, here's the trailer. Take a look and then go see the film and let me know what you think. (You'll notice that for some reason they decided to change the final answer to “D: It is destiny” for the trailer.)

Yo Mother!

It's Mother's Day on Sunday (I'm never sure if it should be Mother's Day or Mothers' Day?). Don't panic if you're reading this in the US (forever hopeful that my blog is being read across the Atlantic!)... you guys don't celebrate your mothers until May. So you still have plenty of time to leave present-buying to the last minute. Here in the UK, this time is already upon us.

The question is what to buy? A card from the petrol station round the corner doesn't really seem to do the job. I'm not sure it really says "Happy Mother's Day... thanks for all you have done for me, for giving me life, caring for me, loving me, and for still doing my washing for me even when I left home". Perhaps a box of chocolates would say that?

I don't know about you (how could I?), but I do often find buying presents quite a hard thing to do. Maybe it's because I'm a man, but buying presents can be quite stressful at times! Especially if you're buying for a woman, whether it's your mum or the other special lady in your life (no, I'm not talking about that woman who works behind the bar at the White Horse). Because women like different things to men, don't they? Things like creams, lotions, smelly candles, that kind of stuff (I can sense now that the men reading this are already beginning to drift off...). And how much do you spend? They'll tell you that it's the thought that counts, but I get the feeling that, by and large, more expensive thoughts count for more!

As Mother's Day approaches, not only do I think of my own mum (of course), but I also find myself thinking of another mum. A woman I've not met personlly, but who I find enormously inspiring. Her name is Gee Verona Walker. Many of you will not have heard of her, or will at least not know her name. However, some of you will have seen her in television news reports following the murder of her 18 year 0ld son, Anthony, in July 2005.

Late on 29 July 2005, Anthony Walker was waiting with his girlfriend and his cousin at a bus stop near his home in a suburb of Liverpool. While they were waiting, another teenager started shouting abuse at them, and so they decided to walk to the next bus stop, taking a short cut through a park. They were then ambushed by two youths, one of whom was now carrying an ice axe. Anthony was killed by a single blow to the head with the axe.

The judge at the murder trial, which found two men guilty of the killing, concluded that it had been racially motivated. Anthony was black, his attackers were white, and it had been racist abuse that had been shouted by one of his attackers earlier at the bus stop.

Why am I telling you this, I hear you ask. I started off with what seemed to be a light-hearted look at Mother's Day, and now I'm talking about a horrific murder that took place almost 2 years ago. And what has any of this got to do with being 'spiritual'??

Well, following Anthony Walker's murder, there was a huge amount of media coverage, first about the murder itself and then about the police investigation and the subsequent trial. During this time, it was the behaviour of Anthony's mother, Gee, that stuck in my memory. Gee Walker held a very strong Christian faith, and because of this she found it in her heart to forgive the men who had killed her son. She was truly able to forgive them for what they had done.

Following the conviction of her son's killers she said, "Unforgiveness makes you a victim and why should I be a victim? Anthony spent his life forgiving. His life stood for peace, love and forgiveness and I brought them up that way" she said following the conviction of her son's killers. "I have to practice what I preach. I don't feel any bitterness towards them really, truly, all I feel is... I feel sad for the family."

I don't know how many of us would be able to do the same thing. To forgive someone for deliberately and so violently taking the life of our child. and the 'reason' being because of the colour of his skin.

Since Anthony's murder, Gee Walker has continued to work tirelessly to ensure that her son's death was not in vain. She and her family have set up the Anthony Walker Foundation dedicated to educate children about racism. All in all, a truly inspirational woman with an inspirational family.

So maybe I'm thinking too much about what I buy my mum for Mother's Day. Maybe it doesn't really matter, as long as I tell her and show her that I love her. Perhaps more importantly, I need to learn to tell her this more often, as one day one of us won't be there to say it or hear it.