If you’re reading this, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you’re doing so for one of three reasons.
The first reason is that you happen to possess a refined and sophisticated taste in journalism and commentary and make a point of reading as many Equinox articles as you possibly can.
We don’t blame you.
The second reason, you may be my mom or dad. If so, I promise that I’m eating my vegetables. My car has plenty of oil, and I know I have to do my taxes soon.
Or maybe you hate Valentine’s Day, and the headline caught your eye.
You wouldn’t be alone in feeling that way, as Valentine’s Day is often regarded as one of the most hated holidays of all time.
It’s normal to feel like Valentine’s Day is obnoxiously fixated on an idealized fantasy of what romantic love should look like.
It can be an ideological Christmas for the nihilist who can’t help but notice the irony in outsourcing poetic sentiments to mass-produced cards or the grandeur of romantic gestures that only come once a year. The processed sugar is too sweet. The movies are too cheesy.
The happy couples announcing the joy they’ve found in oneanother from every rooftop seem to expel a taunting reminder of how happy you could be if you had what they have.
If you hate Valentine’s Day, I get it. I used to hate it too.
Recent years have seen a rise in people choosing to sidestep the day altogether and embrace “Anti-Valentine’s Day” or “Singles Awareness Day” as the antithesis to a day seemingly designed for couples in romantic relationships to shove a victory lap down everyone else’s throat.
Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love. If you aren’t in a healthy, rewarding romantic relationship, it becomes all too easy to see the holiday as a reminder of a deeply desired, albeit unmet expression of your humanity.
For some reason, we’ve grown to view love as a cultural shorthand for romance that distorts other forms of love to inferior levels of a broken hierarchy. We discuss friendship as being “JUST friends,” as if a lack of romantic development stunts the relationship against a higher priority dynamic.
The constitution of friendship doesn’t offer physical intimacy or an expectation of being the other person’s top priority. Your friends choose you without any of that and are there to hold your hand when a romantic relationship ends.
If Valentine’s Day is a celebration of love, maybe it’s time to reshape our conceptualization of love and liberate it from the narrow domain of romance.
Love is worth so much more than a relationship status on Facebook. In the days leading up to February 14th, I urge you to take stock of the different ways love manifests itself in your heart and consider celebrating that love with full force.
Do you love your best friend? Maybe you can plan a day to spend time together, doing something sacred to the two of you. Maybe you love your family and can celebrate Valentine’s Day by taking some time to call or spend time with relatives you don’t always have time to connect with.
You can love your pets. You can love your hobbies and interests. If you’re religious, you can celebrate your love for your faith. You can love your community. You can love humanity.
You can love yourself.
If you’re single on Valentine’s Day, you aren’t disqualified from celebrating the things that make life worth living.
I want to make it clear that this isn’t meant to be a hit piece against romance, and couples who celebrate unapologetically. I hope you never lose sight of why you fell in love with your person and never forget what it feels like to see artwork in each other’s eyes. I hope you celebrate that love with the full force and passion that makes romance worth pursuing.
That being said, there are so many forms of love that go unnoticed in life. They are the colleagues of romance, not the subordinates.
Someday, when fate decrees, you’ll find your person and build constellations in each other’s night skies. When that day comes, don’t forget that love is so much more than that.
Ryan Pacheco can be contacted at
rpacheco@kscequinox.com
