FollowValentine’s Day is literally the best. On Feb. 14, people are either grotesquely bitter and personally offended by the superficiality, capital gain, and loneliness attached with the phenomenon of having (or not having) a Valentine. Or they are 150 percent submerged in a societally-driven passion to ostentatiously demonstrate their love for others — a task men and women alike seem to detest for the remaining 364 days of the year.
This polarized, ridiculously exaggerated dichotomy is also hilariously interesting.
I’ve definitely fallen into the “bitter” category of people in past years because it’s so easy to do. Valentine’s Day makes love, and worthiness of love, seem exclusive and elitist. I mean, can’t people see how morally straining that is?
But I think the bitterness stems from the eyes of the beholder. The way we grew up largely influences our perspective of this holiday.
In my neighborhood, diversity existed but it was never encouraged or even supported. The demographics of my high school were not diverse in terms of race and sexual orientation. There seemed to be a clear majority of people that certainly had different identities, but also collectively fostered the same ideologies concerning what was cool, what was right, and what was love.
Valentine’s Day painted a singular, one-dimensional image in my mind for years growing up — one filled with an obscene number of red roses, overly priced and gaudy diamond jewelry, nervous men, women with ambitious expectations, giddy children, pink alcohol (which I’m pretty sure is not popular on any other day of the year), and the ingestion of enough chocolate to make you yak for a week.
One-dimensional. No surprises. Old-fashioned gender roles. Consumerism. None of this made much sense, but I rolled with it.
This year my perspective of Valentine’s Day shifted dramatically. Whether it’s because of the people I currently surround myself with, literature I’ve recently read, or the vibrant energy cultivated by the citizens Berkeley, I’ve noticed love manifest in new ways each day. I see people loving themselves, their friends, their parents, their interests, their significant others, their grandmas, their dogs, their environment in a more deliberate and vocal way then I ever witnessed before. It seems as though it took living in such an eclectic community for me to notice the diverse ways in which to love and be loved.
In contrast to my previous opinions, now I feel like Valentine’s Day shouldn’t be about dwelling in affection for one other human. For all the people who have ever loved, tried to love, or thought about what it might be like to love, Valentine’s Day is an important day — still very much societally embellished — to realize, acknowledge, and appreciate the enigma of love in our own lives. Love is a concept too important to be spent exclusively on one person.
Maybe for some, a deliberate manifestation of love does translate to dwelling in bitter disappointment for a few hours on a sunny afternoon. And maybe it means blowing your savings on some pretty rocks. All I’m saying is that love exists in more ways that we care to be conscious of, and in even more ways that we will never realize or understand.
If reflecting on that idea is what Valentine’s Day could potentially be all about, then hell, I’m all in.
Image source: weknowmemes.com
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