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Thoughts on Valentine's Day

Sunday 14 February 2010
Written at 11:06 PM

It's that time of the year again where you see lots of red, pink, hearts, and red and pink hearts all around you (incidentally, the colors of this website). It's a relatively harmless holiday, so I'm not going to speak against it so much. I will, however, comment on the society we live in, [1] and how it treats Valentine's Day.

We live in an age where love is practically meaningless. I'm aware of the fact that the word "love" floats around a lot among people. I'm not calling those people liars, or saying that all of them don't know what love means; however, I think the majority of people in this day and age (and place) don't attach much value to love as they used to in the past. It almost became a thing they take for granted. Arranged marriages, as far as I know, don't occur anymore in our part of the world. Parents don't have as much control as they used to over whom their sons or daughters want to marry. In fact, marriage is not even "required" anymore by our society to accept a couple. What I'm pointing to is the fact that we have more or less the freedom to choose the person with whom we'd like to spend an x amount of time of our lives (if not our whole lives). Sure, we may have certain traditions or customs to which we must adhere, but the fact remains that the majority of us can choose such a person.

And yet, many of us feel it's difficult to stay committed to one person. It has become normal in our society to be in many relationships [2] when we're well into the 40's (or even after). Many give an excuse by saying that it's human nature (to be specific, human sexual nature) to want to have different partners in our lifetime.

Some may say that I'm being unfair by questioning their understanding of love if they've been in 35 or so relationships in their lives. They may say, "But I loved every single one of my girlfriends/boyfriends!" That may be, but I personally find it difficult to imagine myself in so many relationships, and to say that I loved each of those 35 equally. Is one's understanding of love really the same after so many relationships? Does one's desire for love really stay the same after it has been tried so many times?

And then there's this holiday, where people celebrate this idea of love. It's an opportunity for couples to go out, celebrate, do something special, etc., or an opportunity to tell a loved one or a friend how much he/she means to you. As I already mentioned, I find this holiday relatively harmless. As with many holidays in the US (and many other countries, but particularly in the US), however, it does annoy me that holidays become commercialized. It just becomes an excuse to go out, buy something and/or spend money in other ways. But aside from that, I find one aspect of the holiday harmless: expressing how much your loved ones/friends mean to you. I do, however, question the meaning that the word "love" [3] carries nowadays.

On a somewhat different note: I got a message from one of my (Arab) friends on the internet wishing me a happy Valentine's Day. I thought the way he expressed it was interesting: (Kul saneh w'inti b' alf khair). It's difficult to translate (as usual), but it's something along the lines of "May you be in good health/a good "state" [of mind/body] every year!" (he didn't explicitly mention Valentine's Day. I simply assumed that that was the reason for his saying that statement) It's the type of expression which I normally hear on birthdays and religious holidays, but I never thought I'd hear it on Valentine's Day. I wonder how many people in the Arab world (specifically in the Levant, where I used to live) actually use that expression on Valentine's Day.

¹ I'm referring to societies in so-called "first world" countries in the western hemisphere, particularly the US
² By "relationships", I'm referring specifically to "romantic relationships", i.e. where two people openly say to each other that they love each other, they talk to each other frequently, think about each other frequently, etc.
³ "romantic love"

EDIT (02-15-2010 3:10 PM EST): I took down the comment box due to an issue which needs to be resolved.

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