on valentine's day and schmucks

Valentines Day is quickly approaching. I'm sure you have been made painfully aware of this by the tacky red and pink hearts in shops and the advertisements for expensive shiny things and cheap boxes of chocolates.

If you talk with anyone about this time of year, you will likely encounter some pretty strong opinions. The big schools of thought seem to be that: 1) Valentines Day is good because it’s good to show your significant other that you love them, 2) Valentines Day is completely preposterous because we should be showing the people we love that we love them every single day, 3) Valentines Day is bad because it promotes the excessive romanticization of romantic relationships and thereby devalues platonic or familial relationships, 4) Valentines Day is bad because shops use marketing that promotes materialism, and in participating in Valentine’s Day, you are promoting the capitalist takeover of the world.

Many seem to ardently hold these strong opinions and also seem very quick to make judgements. Personally, I also used to have a pretty intense distaste for Valentine’s Day, but my opinion has changed over time. Nowadays, it looks like this.

Firstly, most if not all people are emotional beings. We like to know that we are safe and loved, and we like to feel happy and excited. Knowing that, if there is someone that you love, it is likely important to you to make that person feel loved and also to once in a while inject a little of the happy, butterfly-stomach feeling into his or her life. So there, we’ve established that making kind gestures to one's romantic partner is important.

Valentines Day is a day for making those gestures, which we have established are nice to make. This brings us face to face with the next opinion: Valentines Day is silly because we should be expressing our love to our loved ones every day. A wonderful sentiment, and honestly, that was the school of thought I belonged to for a long time. And then I asked myself this question: How often do I do this? The answer was: not often, and more specifically, approximately once every one or two months if not more infrequently.

So here’s the thing that I am now fine with conceding: I am not a purely rational being and I also do not have a good concept of time. Even if I know I should be telling people that I like them every single day, I will inevitably become completely entrenched in my professional and intellectual activities, and I will forget to make the gestures that I know I want to make. For this reason, I need a reminder. 

And so, my current opinion is that Valentine’s Day is convenient and helpful because without the reminder to make nice gestures to people, I would forget. And that’s okay. With that said, I also don’t think that once a year is enough. If you took the amount of happiness someone gets from a massive gesture once a year and compared it to the aggregate happiness from tiny gestures many times in a year, it appears that the latter is far bigger for the people that I know well. Accordingly, I ask myself approximately once every one or two weeks if I have made a gesture.

Regarding the argument that Valentines Day devalues non-romantic relationships, I am a firm believer that the only two factors that can devalue my relationship with some person B are person B herself and me. Valentines Day may exaggerate the importance of romantic relationships, but ultimately I am the one to decide if I buy into that idea or not.

Regarding the opinion that Valentines Day promotes materialism, this is indeed the case. Again, whether or not you buy into the materialism is ultimately your choice. In addition, I encourage myself to remember that everyone is different, and so the things that give one person the heart flutter will differ from those of others. It could mean dressing up in an outfit that you know that she particularly likes, or cooking him his favorite meal, or writing her a slightly awkward but heartfelt letter. The gesture can be extravagant, but it doesn't have to be in order to bring about the intended effect. Remembering this can be useful in reversing any materialist influence that Valentines Day marketing has on you.

So are you a cynical grump for having a negative reaction to Valentines Day? Probably not. There is a lot of pressure put on us all by marketing and media during this time of year, and it’s completely natural to have a visceral reaction to it. If you feel stressed, you should do what you always do to handle stress--no need to take it out on people who love Valentine's day.  

Are you a sappy schmuck for thinking about celebrating Valentines Day? Probably not. You’re probably just a kindhearted, empathetic person who wants his or her significant other to be happy. That’s wonderful. Just take the time to think about what makes that unique person feel loved and happy—do that thing, rather than buying a ridiculously shiny box of sub-par chocolate.

And that’s where I stand on the issue. More succinctly and elegantly put, I just wish we could chill out and love each other and ignore all the silly stuff, and it's mostly all silly stuff.