Today, the obvious holiday with some unobvious advice. Those of you who still believe in true love might not want to read this. I am partially joking here, but partially not. I walk a fine line on the whole love issue to begin with, and Valentine’s Day tends to tip me over the edge into oblivion. Trust me, there are worse places to be than oblivion. But if you have a stomach for cynicism, and dislike the huge stage play that is V-Day, then you might find some wisdom here.
Read on, at your peril/leisure.
Valentine’s Day isn’t a bad holiday, if you like the idea of remembering a Roman who became a martyr because he wouldn’t renounce his Christianity by eating chocolates shaped like hearts, buying roses by the dozen(s), and purchasing cards that simper out sentiments of faux love delivered by fat cupid babies, all in the service of someone whom you’re unlikely to even be with six months down the road.
Am I bitter? You bet I am.
Valentines is the worst holiday foisted upon the world, if for no other reason than the simple fact that it gives Hallmark an excuse to sell cards with the worst kind of love poetry ever conceived by man. In just over two hundred years, we’ve come from the heady Romantic writing of British poets like John Keats and Lord Byron to drivel that hardly passes for English.
The long slow march of decay in a society can be measured in part by the quality of its holidays. To its everlasting disgrace, Valentine’s Day, above and beyond any other holiday, is responsible for the degradation of the idea of respect. Take the Valentine card from the nineties that reads: “With a friend like you on Valentine’s Day, who needs a big, hunky guy bearing chocolates?” The business suit clad fellow with the flashy smile and carrying a huge box reading “Candy” strolls toward the back of the card asking the same question. Only it’s a huge joke for him, because hey, he’s the big hunky guy, and you’re the big fat loser.
Rhetorical as this card is, and as punchy, what is this really saying? That a girl’s feelings can be bought with Switzerland’s only other major export that isn’t cuckoo clocks. That a stand-up guy like you is only as good as a card that implies that you’re no good at all. That you are, in fact, a loser; this card simply validates that fact.
So I was pleased to wake up to a grey day that promised rain (it has since started raining, cold and dreary and perfectly apropos). The weather perfectly matches my antipathy for this most cursed of holidays.
Lileks posts a particularly saddening Bleat about his dog Jasper’s bout with hip dysplasia. It’s a condition I know enough about from my work at the Veterinary Hospital back a few years ago to know that I don’t wish it on any animal, even ones I don’t particularly like (goats, for instance). It’s a reminder of the fleeting nature of life, and how quickly decay comes, even despite our care. I look at Rufus, my cat that’s not really my cat (for which I still owe a story), and see her gazing at me through sleep-slitted eyes, and I wonder how much longer she has. I don’t even know how old she is or how long cats live in general.
How depressing that we measure life in quantities of years, as if it is the definitive ruler of things. The saying “Time heals all wounds” is the motto of a trickster. Wounds are marks of life. At the end, it’s not wounds you succumb to–it’s time. Time doesn’t erase our earthly pains, it just stops them from becoming, forever.
Perhaps that is a thought for Valentine’s Day. Today’s cards and hearts and candy and roses might be tomorrow’s painful romances and tragic loves. And I suppose it is those things, among others, that help us know we are still alive and kicking. So this year, take the time to do Valentine’s Day right. Forget Hallmark. Forget the sexy lingerie or the candlelit dinners. Ignore the shiny plastic smiles and the quickening of your breath as you hold the hand of your lover. Deny the sweet shop your money. Give no member of the opposite sex (or the same, for that matter) the once-a-year rhetorical card of playful cupidean desire. Reject the sentiment of high school romance. Spoil the moment with a well-timed movement of your head as she/he moves in for the kiss.
“I can’t,” you say, and they look at you in confusion. You draw back, letting go and leaving them empty-handed and broken-hearted. “It’s Valentine’s Day, the day of love and life, of sharing and being shared, of caring and giving and being true.”
“Yes,” they cry out. “Come back!”
But don’t you answer. Don’t say a word. They’ll remember it for as long as they live. And they’ll know they’re alive as long as they recollect when you broke up with them, on that grey and rainy Valentine’s Day.