Valentine’s Day is a particularly rosy affair, a picturesque climate of love bursting with passion from all corners of the world, undertoned by the periodic depression of single people wishing they had their Romeos or Juliets (or otherwise) to wash them from the societal shame that happens to come with debilitating loneliness. I think it’s plain from my bitter tone that I am not exactly impressed by Valentine’s Day. It’s not a celebration of love or courtship but a necessity to convince your partner that you care for them. Besides the fact that the building blocks of security should be developed over long spans of time instead of a single day, there’s nothing inherently incorrect about the complete devotion of two people being recognised on a holiday. Just the means by which this devotion is demonstrated irks me. I’m, of course, referring to the sacrifice of one’s soul (really money) to big corporations, which parasitically benefit from unwitting couples to make a buck. Valentine’s Day has been stripped of its original themes of martyrdom and kindness to become a glorified marketing scheme using romance as a currency.
This esteemed day, in actuality, doesn’t serve as the bittersweet dichotomous struggle between the triumphant, committed ones and the unfortunate ones in solitude. Instead, it is a blatant exploitation of all parties, willingly or unwillingly, conforming to a set of unspoken social rules in the pursuit of comfort. I could even go so far as to say that Valentine’s Day disparages the idea of love rather than glorifying it. Corporations like to manipulate the Ted Mosbian delusions of romance to hit their Valentine’s sales targets. I say Ted Mosbian as a sort of homage (more of a criticism) to the protagonist Ted Mosby from the knockout sitcom “How I Met Your Mother”. Ted, throughout the show, is chasing his idea of love—a picture-perfect fantasy determined by the invisible forces of destiny. At a surface level, this might seem reasonable. But as the show repeatedly spells out, Ted makes himself and all of his love interests miserable as they fail ever to reach his impossibly high standards. Ted’s delusions never bring him closer to his goal of love but instead, just inflate his anxiety and hopelessness. I mention this as his personality is a microcosm of the abundance of untouchable, flawless ideas of relationships used as marketing strategies targeted at vulnerable people.
I want to reiterate that my contempt for the commercialisation of Valentine’s Day does not translate to me belittling the significance of love. It’s quite the opposite. Love is a powerful and irreplaceable splash of paint onto a black-and-white world drowned with monotony and decimated by violence. It is a constant source of warmth, fueling you regardless of the unpredictability of life. It is a mutual, selfless declaration of respect and affection between two people, devoid of any conditions. It is not, however—a fairy tale etched in our destinies before we even come into existence—and it does not need to be. It is complete and beautiful as it is. To me, a Valentine’s themed gift card does not do justice to love at all. A man shaving his head to support his wife undergoing chemotherapy is love. A same-sex couple willing to be ostracised for the sake of each other is love. Two people, sitting in silence for hours on end, untethered by anything except the comfort of each other’s presence. That is the inexplicable power of love.