Isn’t it amazing what four little letters can do?

Apart, they don’t say much. Together, L-O-V-E, represent something we can’t live without. A couple years ago, I took this photograph at LOVE Park in Philadelphia’s best-known landmark, the Robert Indiana sculpture. I rushed almost 20 blocks with blistered feet before I had to be at the airport on a blazing summer day, just to see the LOVE for myself.

Love matters, and consider this: According to Huffington Post, Americans will spend $17.6 billion for Valentine’s Day – chocolates, paper cards, and other tangible tokens of romance.

Gifts are fine and dandy, but I’m much more a “words of affection” kind of gal. Love letters are the quickest way to my heart, and my favorite way to show love is writing a sweet note.

I’m not alone in wanting  love letters in the world:

• The wonderful hearts-on-sleevers at The World Needs More Love Letters send them year round.
• My pal Amy started a mailbag revolution this year with her #LOVEx14 campaign. (Check out the awesome handmade cards here!)
• The Huffington Post’s Love Letters Project is “an anthology of reflections on American places by the local people that define them.”

As for me, one of my all-time heroes sums of what love really is with these words:

“True love is not so much a matter of romance as it is a matter of anxious concern for the well-being of one’s companion.”

- Gordon B. Hinckley, Stand a Little Taller

Happy Valentine’s Day! Sending some love your way.