Why Should My Heart Not Dance?

I may be the only single woman who actually likes Valentine's Day. The cheesy little cards and chocolate hearts. The red and pink. The syrupy love songs. I like it ALL.

I should be properly cynical today given my current situation (you know...my 'single, almost 25, with no prospects of a mate' situation). But, I just can't seem to muster up that emotion. Not, today, at least (and, believe me, I've tried). But, I fell asleep last night watching 'Sabrina' and I woke up this morning with the sun on my face (which, incidentally, is my favorite way to wake up) and I just feel...content.

I've decided to publish a passage today from one of my very favorite books, Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis.

Yes. I've used this exact passage before in one of my very first posts, but that was eons ago, and this passage just happens to best voice my current sentiments.

Romance or not, today my heart dances. Why should it not?

"And my struggle was this. You may well believe that I had set out sad enough; I had come on a sad errand. Now, flung at me like frolic or insolence, there came as if it were a voice--no words--but if you made it into words it would be, "Why should my heart not dance?" It's the measure of my folly that my heart almost answered "Why not?" I had to tell myself over like a lesson the infinite reasons my heart had not to dance. My heart to dance? Mine, whose love was taken from me, I, who must never look for other love, the drudge of the King, the jailer of hateful Redival, perhaps to be murdered or turned out as a beggar when my father died--for who knew what Glome would do then? And yet, it was a lesson I could hardly keep in my mind. The sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other to the world's end. The freshness and wetness all about me made me feel that I had misjudged the world; it seemed kind, and laughing, as if its heart also danced..."