Do you smell that?
It’s that magical time of year again; when massive, heart-shaped boxes of overpriced chocolates line the entry way to every supermarket, drug store, and gas station; when renegade roadside stands of roses shoot up like springtime driveway crabgrass—when restaurants, jewelers, and car dealers all leap wildly from their respective corners, breathlessly salivating in anticipation of the oncoming emotional Armageddon:
Valentine’s Day.
Chances are a good deal of you reading this will soon find yourself somewhere along the continuum of those whose hearts and wallets will be hijacked by Hallmark and crushed beneath the weight of candy-coated affection and store-bought closeness.
As a service, I’d like to offer a few tips to help you retain some sanity and dignity, as this most holy day of relational obligation approaches.
Whether you’re attached, estranged, alone (or some odd combination of the three), here’s how you might avoid disaster this week:
1) Don’t overcompensate, financially or emotionally.
If you’re married or in a relationship of some kind, you’ll no doubt feel the subtle squeeze applied by the media, by your friends, maybe even by your own partner, to make V-Day a romantic event; a visual, tangible day to honor your relationship and openly celebrate your mate. You actually already have 365 of those—they’re called days. If you need a yearly appointment on the calendar to cue yourself to show affection, kindness, and appreciation toward the person you’re in a relationship with, you’ve got much bigger problems than deciding which size stuffed bear or scented body wash accurately corresponds to your emotional investment.
If you are already making it your year-round, daily task to love the one you’re with, well you won’t feel the pressure to overspend, overstate, or overcompensate this weekend. How attentive and available you are to your beloved on February 15th, speaks louder than anything you’ll say in a glitter-covered card the day before anyway.
Bottom line: Don’t try to purchase relational credibility in the Seasonal aisle at Target.
2) Celebrate the blessings that come in single-servings.
One of the most dangerous parts of V-Day, is the incessant, overwhelming, urgent cultural pressure to “have someone” on that very day; to be half of a whole, attached, engaged, spoken for, etc. It’s something many of us have dragged around since middle school. What that pressure does, is rob you of the great gift that can be found in living life as a single, complete, fully formed human being. It also tends to make one day in February, some kind of romantic litmus test for your attractiveness and personal value. Yes, relationships are wonderful and sure they can be the source of great joy and contentment, but those things aren’t the sole property of couplehood either. If this V-Day finds you alone for whatever reason, that isn’t a symptom of anything sad or tragic or telling. It’s simply the season you’re in, and there is amazing life to be found in it.
Bottom line: There is absolutely no correlation between your worth and your relationship status—period.
3) Be okay with your not-okayness.
This February 14th might find you in a really dark place, or in some very rough waters. You may be grieving the loss of your lifelong Valentine or the end of your marriage or the severing of a relationship, and this painful truth is only magnified by the date on the calendar. Every cute gift store display and every clever TV commercial may be a cruel reminder of what you’ve lost and who you’re missing. Resist the urge to feel badly about feeling badly. Remember: V-Day isn’t real. Your pain is. One of them is a faux holiday designed to move merchandise in the “dog days” of Winter, and the other is the honest condition of your soul. Don’t let the wrong one have the louder voice in your head this week by piling guilt on top of grief. Pain doesn’t take a holiday.
Bottom line: Suffering doesn’t care what the calendar says and neither should you.
4) Go all-in with the Love thing.
If you absolutely must buy-in to a prepackaged, manufactured holiday seemingly devoted to Love, well then get big with the dang thing, already! Instead of spending all of your energy and money this week wading in the shallows of chocolate hearts and stuffed animals, go into deeper water either alone or with the one you love. Take the opportunity to consider how loving of a person you are—yes to your spouse, significant other, and secret crush if you have one, but to your kids, to your parents, to the people you work with and work for, to your son’s math teacher, to the waiter who serves your romantic dinner this weekend, and even the cashier who rings up your panic-stricken, last-minute, late night candy and flower run. Think about how loving you are to the people on your news feed, and those who pass you on the street, and those a half a world away.
Maybe take just a little of that gooey, store-bought, snuggly love stuff (that has little more than a 24-hour shelf life anyway) and transform it into something more lasting and real; a compassionate few minutes listening to a hurting person around you, a couple of hours serving in your community, money diverted from a fancy dinner to feed children through a global hunger relief agency. It may not sound very “romantic” on the surface, but there’s nothing more attractive and alluring than someone who really cares about other people, and there are few things that bring two people closer together than collaborating in an act of kindness to another.
Bottom line: Selfless is the new sexy.
5) Give everyone a break—including you.
Everybody’s already under enough pressure every day trying to get a job, keep a job, gain weight, lose weight, pass the class, make friends, save money, get the kids out in the morning, keep the house clean, figure out the meaning of life, pay the bills, remember to buy milk, ponder mortality, contemplate immortality, and get enough sleep despite all of it. We’re all fairly exhausted and stressed out and frantic on even the quietest of days, and the last thing most of us need is a day that ramps all that up even more and calls it Love.
If going out to dinner gives you joy, then do it. If giving chocolates and flowers is fun for you, knock yourself out. If writing sweet love notes is your love language, then speak it. But if you sense yourself having some sort of performance anxiety about being the perfect Valentine or about giving the proper show of adoration, or if you place too much weight on the shoulders of a loved one to make good today or on yourself to be perfect or to be lovable: repent.
Bottom Line: Life is difficult. Go easy on one another.
So yes, get completely caught up in all the red-ribboned, sugar-coated, power ballad sentimentality of V-Day if you must, but do it all with a level head about how and why you spend your time and money; with a heart big enough to love people well beyond the day, and with the secure knowledge that you are much more than the cards and gifts you’ll get—or the ones you won’t.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
However you are today, you are so loved.
XOXO.
John
