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“So, knowing all that, what do you think we should do?” I continued.

Lhaki shifted her guitar and sat up straight. “I think we have to take ourselves out of the competition. It wouldn’t look right if one of us won.”

Sir Tenzin stood to the side, fidgeting. I was pleasantly surprised I hadn’t needed him to back me up.

“That’s great, Lhaki,” he said, and I was even more surprised that he’d been listening closely. “Really great. Thujee, do you have the list so we can call the new finalists?”

“Yes, Sir Tenzin,” Thujee said, “I’ve got it. We’ll start calling now.”

The crowd dispersed, launching into action. The evening’s Symphony of Love was to begin in just fifteen minutes. Lhaki stood up, smiling to no one in particular, and strummed her way around the room, as if nothing had happened, as if this was the way it was supposed to turn out all along. A few minutes ago she’d been upset at the mere suggestion she shouldn’t win the contest, yet now she was fine with having lost her chance at victory and hamburgers.

As I watched her, I considered Valentine’s Day and loss. The mysteries of the brain and emotion, of letting go, of moving on. Maybe it was her short lifetime of Buddhist education that allowed Lhaki to snap back so quickly. The topic of the last episode of the Buddhist-themed Dharma Bites show had been “impermanence,” one of the fundamental beliefs of the religion. I’d listened intently as the hosts explained the concept: Everything is always in a state of flux. Nothing lasts forever—no triumph, love, no happy feeling, no state of sadness. Clinging to a person or place or moment in time was futile and unwise and led to suffering; so did wanting things to be different than they were.

Maybe it was, in fact, simple teenage rebound and not her religious upbringing that was making the outcome of the contest sit well with Lhaki. Still, I liked considering this concept of impermanence. “Youth is temporary and fleeting,” the Kuzoo manifesto declared. Babies didn’t stay babies forever. Our bodies changed and grew old. Feelings morphed over time.

Impermanence wasn’t a word you’d ever want to associate with Valentine’s Day, as silly a Hallmark holiday as it was. Love was supposed to last forever. And yet, anyone slightly older than the typical Kuzoo volunteer knew that was a fairy tale. So why did we insist on pretending that it did, and that it should? It seemed to cause us nothing but misery, in exchange for a momentary feeling of pleasure, comfort, the illusion of safety.

Once, I’d been proposed to on Valentine’s Day by a man I adored; a year later he’d run away, with no explanation. Four years after that, the improbable occurred: As I meandered alone through Central Park on a snowy Valentine’s Day, I spotted him on a romantic walk with a beautiful red-haired woman, who I later learned was his new bride. Thrown into turmoil by the emotion of the coincidence, I found myself settling into acceptance, even feeling pleasure for him, over his new life. Right now, as another Valentine’s Day approached, I could acknowledge that it was okay that my fiancé had left, fine that he had—maybe, in fact, even better that he had. All these years I had believed that everyone else commanded stability, while I floundered about. That was ridiculous. How many loveless marriages had I witnessed, complicated relationships including children and tangled finances that made it difficult to escape? How many unhappy single people did I know who were waiting around to be rescued by someone, anyone before they allowed themselves to start living? Who did I know who had anything without compromise? Existing involved compromise. Life, particularly a love life, was far richer and more complicated than a fairy tale. Sometimes—more often than not—love came to you in a short fit of wonder, warmed you, enthused you, and then vanished as suddenly as it had arrived. And that was okay, too. Sitting here in this faraway radio station, where I’d just won a small victory, I could see now that I had it good in my own