Karen Williams
Let me start by saying that I love Valentine’s Day!
Okay, so it’s a manufactured “holiday,” a day for lovers to celebrate their love. What’s wrong with that? Haters get to celebrate everyday!
You read, watch, and digest the news—if you want to call it that—and it’s all about war and violence and injustice. People being mean and hateful and prejudiced and just plain wrong to other people, and sometimes animals, which really upsets some of the people who then wish those abusers dead.
It just never seems to end!
And then—as though to offset all of the bad stuff that is coming up—there’s Valentine’s Day, a sickeningly sweet and silly way to acknowledge that there is love in the world, even if it’s mostly limited to two people.
Let’s face it. When you are in a kind, loving, thoughtful, warm and caring relationship, partnership, two-some of some type…there is bound to be some acknowledgement given from time to time in the form of gifts or services, get-aways or get-alongs, organics or orgasms. Somehow, one or the other of you is going to let it be known that happiness is being shared between you two, and more often than not, it happens on the regular.
That being said, Valentine’s Day must be for the forgetful, too-busy couples who simply need to be reminded to show care and appreciation in the middle of their important, hectic lives.
I propose a general makeover for many of the days that we call holidays in America! Why not congratulate people that they are working or have a job or some sort of income on Labor Day? How about taking a military family out for a meal on Veteran’s Day? Let’s choose to gift a local charity or nonprofit organization for Christmas as an alternative to buying items we already have and don’t need.
And for Valentine’s Day, we can decide to be loving towards whomever we come into contact with that day! In fact, we can carry around bouquets of roses and give them to everyone who does services for us, like the dry cleaner guy, or the cashier at the gas station, the librarian at your local branch or the barista at your favorite coffee shop. I’d love to give my postal guy two dozen roses for coming to my door in snow, sleet, hail, rain, and hot burning sun, but it would probably be a drag for him to go around with them in his mailbag all day.
You get my point!
We could decide to go far overboard and send a note of forgive and forget to an ex, reach out to a long lost relative, give some love to elderly patients in a nursing home or visit some children in the hospital and share Valentine’s Day hugs.
The idea of sharing love only between lovers is becoming obsolete and downright boring. We can expand ourselves above and beyond that which we have come to believe we are capable. It’s time to grab those flowers and fly! On the wings of love, we can search out new ways and opportunities to give and share love, particularly with those who are often forgotten.
The fun part is that you get to decide! You can thank your publisher and producer, your teacher and students, your children and your children’s network of caregivers and coaches. Valentine’s Day can be a day of random love-making with as many people as you can, because all of us have one thing in common: we want to give love.
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