Desperately Looking for Love? It Won’t Take A Modern Miracle to Touch Your Heart

With Valentine's Day looming, you may think that your love life has been littered with ill-fated relationships or could be fodder for yet another Shakespearean tragedy. When conditions become hopeless, don't stop looking for love. Being alone isn't the answer.

Mocking this feeling of despair, last season How I Met Your Mother’s Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) deemed Feb. 13 Desperation Day, the perfect time to pick off insecure singles frantically looking for love. Perhaps you feel that is the holiday you should celebrate this month. But before you join groups like Valentine’s Day, Helping raise suicide rates since 496 AD on Facebook, or fall prey to the calculating tactics of men and women on the prowl just because you’re single, consider the following fact.

Love comes in many different forms, and oftentimes one’s situation isn't as woebegone as he or she might think. Singles typically have more free time than their partnered counterparts. That extra time can be shared with friends. Aged relatives, neighbors, and veterans are also frequently lonely or depressed over their circumstances and would love to know that someone cares about them.  Then there are at-risk children in dire need of good mentors, tutors and role models.

Over the years I made some of my fondest memories and closest friends when I put aside my own concerns and forged relationships with strangers who needed my compassion and friendship. I still think fondly of the once-shy nine-year-old boy who came out of his shell when I mentored him via Big Brothers Big Sisters, or the smiles I brought to the faces of elderly residents in a nursing facility when I visited them and entertained them with songs I’d play on the piano. Sure, those relationships never turned into romance, but they were definitely a heartwarming substitute until the day I met my own wife.

The author Willa Cather once said, “Where there is great love, there are always miracles.” I love the inspirational sentiment behind that quote because it serves to remind each of us that we can make our own magic happen if we are willing to think about our life from a fresh perspective and take the proper steps to change our plight. Being alone doesn't have to mean being lonely. Think outside the box and you’ll find that your heart has been touched by a brand of love that will brighten your days and those of the person whose life you touch.