You
Choose: What Does Valentine’s Day MEAN – Mindless Commercial Holiday or Deeply
Meaningful Reminder Day?
What
do you really believe about Valentine’s Day, right now?
Some
of my clients don’t celebrate. There is
a continuum from those who brush it off as a concocted, artificial, commercial
sham, an excuse for everyone in a relationship to be guilted into gifts and
expensive dinners, to the other extreme of a mellow “Let those who want to buy
chocolate, do so. It’s not harming
anyone.” Are you somewhere on that
continuum?
Others
celebrate, and again there is a continuum of what is being celebrated. At one end of the rainbow are the “We need a
romance holiday, to help us remember that romance is what started us on the
road to bills, diapers and trash pickup day.” And at the other end of the Let’s
Celebrate are the people who are celebrating love, not romance.
I’m
in the Celebrate Love camp. In modern US
culture, romance is what we mean we say “love,” but the word has a much broader
definition. That opening of the heart
that is love encompasses how we cherish our favorite family, the brothers and
sisters of the heart that our deep friendships become, the animals who enrich
our souls and extend our healthy lifespan.
Our heart-opening is what makes us human. Our caring for each other, those we know
deeply and those of our community and nation whom we don’t know but who are
beset with illness or troubles, is what ennobles our existence. After all, every mammal species finds food,
raises young and tries to stay alive. Caring
only for oneself means nothing. Love for
others, human and otherwise, known to us and unknown but in need, is our legacy
from our 10,000 generations of ancestors and our gift to the future. I think that enormous component of our
humanity deserves at least one holiday – don’t you?
Can
you celebrate Valentine’s Day as the holiday that belongs to every heart that
knows and practices love?
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