By Margaret Teague
Staff Writer

Valentine’s Day.

While reading that first sentence some of you closed your eyes, and shrugged with a blissful smile. Love is in the air.

On the contrary, you may have just thrown up a little in your mouth. Heartbreak happens to us all, but just because a relationship is over does not make it for nothing.

It was C.S. Lewis who said, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.” As for me, I have been in both places: Cloud nine even on the grayest days, and camped out next to the tissue box.

I write with good news, that though we may not all be hitched or soon-to-be, Valentine’s Day is about love. Fortunately for us, our city is in desperate need of it.

This Friday is an opportunity.

I could rattle off some outrageous Valentine’s money facts, mentioning the millions of dollars Americans spend on cards, candy, chocolate, and roses the week before Valentine’s Day, but there are more important matters to discuss.

In a recent TED Talk, Becky Blanton described her battle with homelessness:

“I felt out of control of my life, and I don’t know when or how it happened, but the speed at which I went from being a talented writer and journalist to being a homeless woman living in a van, took my breath away. I hadn’t changed. My IQ hadn’t dropped, my talent, my integrity, my values, everything about me remained the same, but I had changed somehow. I spiraled deeper and deeper into a depression.”

A man once told her that the real homeless don’t have hope.

“Society equates living in a permanent structure with having value as a person. I failed to realize how quickly the negative perceptions of other people can impact our reality if we let it,” said Blanton.

After over a year of homelessness, Blanton stayed with friends until she could get back on her feet.

“By the summer of the following year…I was living in my own apartment, I was no longer homeless, and I was no longer invisible.

“Thousands of people work full and part-time jobs and live in their cars, but society continues to stigmatize and criminalize living in your vehicle or on the streets, so the working homeless primarily remain invisible.

“But if you ever meet one, engage them, encourage them and offer them hope. The human spirit can overcome anything if it has hope.

“I’m here to tell you that based on my experience people are not where they live, where they sleep, or what their life situation is at any given time. Hope always, always finds a way.

“Engage them, encourage them, and offer them hope,” Blanton said.

Who is Blanton referring to to do this?

The people with homes, the middle class, the lower class, the upper class, those of us with satiated stomachs during the day and fluffy pillows awaiting  us at night.

But according to Blanton the criteria for helping the homeless is actually less than having a white cushion or three meals a day: it is the ability to be a hope-giver.

I often equate hope-giving with love-giving, and since Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, what better a time than the national day of love to extend kindness?

College students are in constant motion and the majority of us run on coffee for survival.

Despite its seemingly magical powers to energize us after minimal hours of sleep, sometimes a warm beverage—whether a dark roasted coffee with warmed milk and ginger, or a steaming cup of green tea that warms the body and perhaps even the soul – offers not just caffeine, but hope.

My suggestion is that we buy a hot beverage for someone who looks like they could use a little hope. It is not enabling, it’s loving, and it’s just coffee.

Don’t let not being in a relationship on Valentine’s Day fool you into thinking you don’t have a reason to show love. Start with coffee, start with hope.