Valentine's Day Reviewed

When I was in my earlier stages of growing up, Valentine’s Day was the cause of much joy, or at least a slight release from the painful monotony of winter. I would eat lots of sugary, heart-shaped foods and exchange a plethora of store bought Valentines with other elementary schoolers, which pretty much checked all of the boxes for what constituted a good day for 3rd grade Brooke.  

The way we celebrate Valentine’s Day is not too different from the way we typically celebrate holidays: Eating food and giving people things. Except this day is different because the expressly stated purpose for celebrating Valentine’s Day is not always one we want to celebrate: Love  

More specifically, romantic love.  

Romantic love is like a lot of things in college, meaning everyone seems to go about it at different paces and using different (occasionally questionable) methods.  

But at the same time, it is not like things in college. Although it may cause the same amount of stress, loving and being loved by someone is unfortunately not as clean cut as a paper due at midnight.  

With love, there are no clear deadlines or rubrics. Valentine’s Day can feel like it challenges that notion. It can cause all these other neat types of love in our life–like the love we have for our friends and family and dog and campus squirrels–to feel deeply, painfully, insignificant. It’s a deadline that passes year after year, and if you do not happen to have a person on this very arbitrary day, you may feel left with a sense of loss for something you cannot quite name.  

We can become so inundated with the idea of a relationship we should have, that we can lose sight of a lot of other, arguably more important things.  

My last Valentine’s Day was spent a few months out of a breakup. So, as you may be able to infer, I was sad. I spent the afternoon crammed in a dorm room, eating pizza with a few of my friends, and talking about our years and lives and how we had changed and why we were thankful for each other. I don’t think I recognized it then, but it’s what I really really needed at that time. In fact, I think it was love.  

And I think that might have been love as much as the way my sister and her husband beamed at each other as they exchanged vows, when my grandparents stood arm and arm with each other in their kitchen and told us again how they first met, when a friend calls and tells you about a new boy they’re talking to.   

And I think that might be love as much as love is difficult but necessary conversations, a professor willing to critique you because they know it will make you better, when coworkers bring snacks to share, a parent who takes a call late at night, being there for the people who need you, allowing yourself to be chased by a horde of children for hours on end, just because they think it's fun.   

Romantic love is love, and it's important. But there are also a billion different ways throughout your life that people show love to you and you show love to other people. Those should not be disregarded. Those interactions form the basis of our being, they bring us joy, they’re what drive us to make the decision to wake up and try again to love other people. 

I don’t know how you’re spending Valentine’s Day this year, but I do hope you realize that there are people who love you and people you love. Love can ebb and flow and challenge our growth and teach us things about ourselves. It is indisputably complicated, sure. But it's necessary.