I’m proud to announce that this year’s official Valentines Day song is the Charlie Haden & Pat Metheny song “Spiritual,” from their album Beyond The Missouri Sky (Short Stories). This has very quickly risen to one of my all time favorite songs. And I only just heard it for the first time Friday night.

My favorite part is how even though its the last song on the album, they still tack on 30 seconds of silence to the song even after its over.

This is a group for anyone born on February 14th.

I was born on Valentines Day 1964 and have always wanted to gather other valentines together and build a philanthropic non-profit organization. Since Facebook makes it so easy to see who was born on a given date it will be easy to find other valentines and invite them to be friends, join the group and help build a 501(c)3 complete with a philanthropic foundation.

The initial idea for this group to get the ball rolling is for each member to do something for someone else on February 14th every year. You don’t have to know the person and the person doesn’t even have to know who did something for them, but it should make a difference in the other person’s life.

A few years ago an old friend of mine had very serious bladder surgery and the first day he was well enough to have visitors was Valentines Day, so I made a visit to see him, which was the first time in years. That’s a very simple and obvious example of what I want this group to be about.

Perhaps you’d like to donate a few hours or a whole day of your time using the skills you have in your profession to make a difference in someone else’s life. For example if you’re an electrical engineer you could offer to inspect and rewire someone’s house free of charge.

In a lot of ways its an idea that’s similar to the Pay It Forward movement, the only difference being we’re all born on Valentines Day and as such have had plenty of time to meditate on what that means to each of us and how we’ve each tried to internalize such an arbitrary yet significant birthday. After all, if we can’t save the world, who can?

So next Valentines Day, make a splash.

Valentines of the world, unite and take over.

For the last 11 years I’ve been building towerofbabel.com, the multilingual, multicultural online journal and community of arts and ideas, recognized by the United Nations as one of the most important Social and Human Sciences Online Periodicals.