valentine's day

Happy Valentine's Day!

I haven't really gotten that pang in my heart or the minor aching or stirring of my memory that I thought that I would get. Perhaps as the minutes tick by and advance me into the night it will begin, but for now, at 11:00pm exactly on February 14th, 2010, I'm doing just fine :)

In high school, I didn't have a significant other for any Valentine's Day, wasn't ready for one, and didn't really want one all too badly, and so this date always signified a sort of "love" day rather than one in which to celebrate romantic relationships, lust, and amorous promises. I was one of those people who made 50 valentines and little batches of cookies to distribute to my friends and family on this date. Valentine's Day was intended to celebrate love...and so I celebrated love. For my friends and family.

For the longest time, for far too long, really, I forgot about this young, hopeful, and quite beautiful tradition that I had upheld for those years of my adolescence. I abandoned it for the arbitrary, accepted expectation that I should find someone to share my life with...NOW. As in, right NOW. It's funny, we talked about it in my economics of education course, a lot of people have this unspoken motive for coming to college, to find a significant other. I guess it makes sense, humans are relatively codependent and interdependent, sociable creatures, after all. But it is interesting to think that we seek to find some other form of personal validation besides all of the love and care that our family and friends give us. Anyways. I followed suit. Clearly. And even now, I struggle with the slight fear that I won't find someone. But that isn't what life is supposed to be about anyway.

So, this Valentine's Day, I enjoyed taking care of friends and watching out for them when we had a slightly unexpected turn of events on our night out on the town (nothing serious, just some interesting things), I gave out some personalized handmade valentines to some of the people who have been there for me and have been beautiful friends, and I celebrated friends and fun with the ultimate frisbee team in our 2nd annual Whipelove gathering during which we exchange valentines, eat food, and this year, watch the Winter Olympics. What a PERFECT Valentine's Day weekend :)

And with that, I will leave you with a couple beautiful quotations that I have discovered within the past week or so in making and receiving valentines:

"Love is like the wild-rose briar / friendship is like the holly tree / the holly is dark when the rose briar blooms / but which will bloom most constantly?" - Emily Brontë

"Never let the hand you hold hold you down" - Anonymous

"Le us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardners who make our souls blossom." - Marcel Proust

And one more thing that I learned in my "research": the verb "to love" in Persian is the same verb to say "to have a friend." "I love you" translated literally is "I have you as a friend." How beautiful is that?

Happy Valentine's Day :)