Different Seasons of Love
Today is Valentine’s Day, a day often associated with romantic love, but also a reminder of how many other forms love takes in our lives: friendships, companionships, kinships, and the quiet ways we care for one another.
With spring here and Chinese New Year ahead of us, it does feel like a season when love becomes more visible, with gatherings, celebrations, and the way people show up for each other. And yet, even in seasons like this, emotions are rarely singular. Some of us feel warmth and joy. Some feel quiet gratitude. Some feel the weight of absence. Some feel more alone than usual.
We tend to position romantic love at the centre. Maybe because it feels rare, intense, alive, unforgettable. And maybe because it’s the first love story we were ever part of — the one that brought us into this world.
As part of a project at the beginning of this season, I’ve taken an interest in a new medium, oil painting. There’s something about oil — that it feels softer, almost romantic in texture. Perhaps it is this quality that led me to reflect about love in this season
Art title: to be defined | Art status: incomplete
I’ve been working on these two pieces side by side. I am quietly pleased with the direction they’re moving in. In a season where love can feel louder through festivities and expectations, these works feel like a quieter conversation…..
The 2 pieces are complementary to each other, yet they carry very different energies. One leans cool, gentle, deeply layered. The other feels warm, open, and inviting. They are still incomplete now while it makes me wonder if love is ever truly finished, or if it is always in the process of becoming, revealing itself layer by layer, in its own time.
Looking at them together, I wondered about how every form of love holds more than one side: more than one perspective, more than one emotional climate. Love often exists within different circumstances too: different moments in our lives, different versions of ourselves. Sometimes two very different inner seasons meet at the same time, quietly shaping how we feel, respond, and grow.
I thought about love in different emotional seasons
Not every season feels like spring.
Some feel quiet and slow.
Some feel alive and expressive.
Some feel muted and weighed down.
Maybe love isn’t one consistent feeling.
Maybe it shifts temperature over time
cool, warm, uncertain, tender, heavy, expansive
and we shift along with it.
For me, love continues to change form with time and with each season.
I’m learning to notice it, and allowing it to unfold by itself, sometimes quietly, sometimes in full bloom, sometimes in ways we don’t yet quite fully understand.
Happy Valentine’s Day to all of us, in our own seasons of loving, and to all the ways love shows up in our lives.
And maybe love, in all its changing forms, is still what it means to be alive today
