It’s that day of the year again! Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone! As usual 14th February starts with loads of messages and forwards. What is Valentine’s Day anyway? Just another day which has been glorified and associated with romantic love? Or is it a day when you express love towards family, friends, spouse and others ?
Everyone surely knows the history behind Valentine’s Day (Thank God for Wikipedia!) so let’s jump straight to the messages. There was a phase more than a decade ago when Valentine’s Day was a day associated with only romantic love. The text messages you got would be wishing you love in life, a good BF/GF, proposals, and subtle love messages. Then came a time when we started questioning (with some help from political parties) whether we are blindly following western traditions. Surely we wouldn’t stop celebrating V-day so the perspective of this day being dedicated to everyone we love, friends, and family was accommodated in our text messages as well.
Then we went a step further with messages trying to remind you to love your country… I am sure most of you have received the forward with pictures of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru & Sukhdev being hanged to death on 14th February doing the rounds! Well, not that they were actually hanged till death on 14th February.
So you see when you are old and have experienced decades of Valentines Day messages you wonder what is coming up next!
Having said that, for me Valentines Day is a day of expression of romantic love. Love is obviously not dependant on a day but it’s nice to have that one day in the year when you can express it in the silliest possible way, get those butterflies in your tummy and feel nice and stupid. Being a total romantic fool, I have always been excited about V-day. When I sit back and think about the stupid things I have done it makes me smile. Technically I have been single on Valentine’s Day for 9 years in a row now, but yet this day doesn’t make me sulk. I enjoy going down memory lane and remembering the crazy little things, like one year in college when I had a huge banner put up outside the college canteen just to wish someone. Although I never ended up even dating the person, I still think of it and smile.
Expressing love is a beautiful thing. It could be in whichever way you please – balloons, cards, long drives, poems…just about anything that your heart wants you to do. Take time out this day and express your love. Be silly, be in love, be anything, just don’t be worried about reciprocation. Because one day you will sit and look back at all the years and smile. Just as I do now.
P.S – In all the years after I joined college and explored relationships, I received a Valentines Day card from my mom every single year. She handpicked the card to ensure the wordings on the card were encouraging and one that would remind me of how much I was loved. I don’t know if she gave it to me as a consolation since she knew I was single, but those cards were and continue to remain the best Valentine’s gift of my life.
