It's that day again: the biggest holiday that isn't. The absolute most deceptively devastating self-image and self-confidence destroyer known in the US of A. Valentine's Day. This is the day that simply makes losers of us all.
First of all, we don't even really know who St. Valentine was or what he was good for. Second of all, it was the greeting card industry that marketed it, like so many other faux holidays, to increase sales; and yes, we fell for it ... again. And, third, and finally, of it all, how depraved and degraded do you have to be to single out one day a year to allegedly honor "Love". If you have to do that, you don't know what it is to begin with. You're just another loser who bought into the fad.
There was a time, and there have been cultures which have taken the notion of LOVE seriously. No, America isn't one of them: it doesn't know how to take anything that is serious seriously. Let's take the Ancient Greeks ... now there was a love culture. Why? Well, they recognized that there are simply different kinds of "love" and lumping them all together under one "word" is, well, a bit short-sighted. They had and understood different kinds of love, like eros (sexual love or attraction/desire), philea (brotherly love), or patria (love of the fatherland; yes, they were masculine oriented in that one), or agape (divine or transcendental love). But us, we English speakers, what have we got? Nothing really.
We're one of those poor, unfortunate cultures that has one central, therefore rather diluted notion of something -- in this case, "love" -- that needs to be further specified by adding some kind of descriptor, an adjective, if you will, so we end up with all kinds of phrases, like "platonic love", "sexual love", "brotherly love", "love of country", "love of self", but even though we use different words to describe them, they aren't all the same. Love is simply not love. But we've lost sight of that.
So what is it, really, that we celebrate on Valentine's Day. Well, let's examine the prototypical scenario for the day. Mr. I-hope-I-get-lucky BUYS flowers, candy, a card (or any combination, mix-and-match, variations or augmentations (I'm thinking balloons here) of those things, and these are the context for the GIFT (too often, depending on the intimacy of the relationship, something from not-too-serious, but noticeably firmly priced jewelry to intimate attire, or even -- gasp -- an engagement ring ... and tell me that's not tacky on Valentine's Day), and this will all be presented either throughout the day or at, yes, a special, intimate, romantic dinner at a restaurant that is one (or if you're particularly anxious or horny (if there is in fact a difference) at best two) price-class(es) above your usual dinner-date place. Commercialism has never been so venerated. But what does any of this have to do with love?
If you are together with someone and every day is not some kind of Valentine's Day, you've missed the whole point. Love, in particular the love between two individuals, is not expressed through goods and gifts and fancy meals. Love is expressed through sacrifice, most often self-sacrifice; through dedication and stick-to-it-ness when things are tough; through being there when you don't want to be, or even better, when you think you can't anymore; through pain and tears and heartbreak and sickness and building "the other" up when the world is coming down around them.
Yeah, I LOVE Valentine's Day, for it's the perfect day to let your significant other know that you haven't the slightest clue about "love" at all. And what's even better, how many of those "others" expect all that nonsense?
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