Love, Love, Love

Valentine's Day. Not a big fan of it.

Sure, I mean, there can never be too much love in the world. So I would never say that a "holiday" designed to celebrate love is a bad thing.

But it's the design itself that the problem. The way we "celebrate" something that pretty much takes care of itself is the problem.

If you love someone, then you don't need a specific day designated by Hallmark or any other commercial entity to tell you, "Come on, show her how you feel." She already knows.

And I do mean "she". The whole day is meant to lay a guilt trip on men, predominantly, so that they will spend their way out of hell or purgatory or whatever their relationship has become.

I'm lucky enough to be married to a beautiful woman who has always felt the same way about this holiday as I do. Our celebration isn't confined to one day, and if there's no card or flowers or chocolate that day, then there might be on any other given day of the year. And it's not a one-sided thing--we watch each other's back every day of the year and have done so for a couple of decades now. We're the happiest couple I know, and we somehow manage to do it without Valentine's Day deciding whether or not we're worthy of each other.

Oh, I've had my years when I've bought chocolate. This year, I even bought flowers. But that's only because I figured it would be surprise, since we never do that. And it was.

Valentine's Day is for the young, or really I should say, those couples who haven't been together more than a few years. It's also for those whose relationship needs an annual reminder to pay some attention to the one you're with. Other than that, I wish Valentine's Day as a so-called celebration--at least the way we celebrate it currently--would just die off. "Keep it in your own way and I'll keep it in mine," as Scrooge says about Christmas.

I like the celebratory, loving, caring, gentle part of Valentine's. I just could do without the "buy, buy, buy, guilt, guilt, guilt" part of it. It's not necessary.

And, as Forrest Gump would say, that's all I have to say about that. Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day. :-)