Beacon V-Day, 2010

It's long been a tradition of mine to excoriate Valentine's Day, a holiday marinated in manufactured merchandise or the moroseness of the malcontent. Indeed, it's difficult not to think that its creators were malicious sadists hellbent on either undermining existing relationships with soulless materialism or making those without them acutely aware of their oh so dolorous deficiencies. (My grapes aren't sour, they're raisins!) But while such pontification makes for a great way to stick it to The Man, it doesn't do much for the lonely and the lovers still trying to negotiate the strange dynamics of the day.

So if we do not attack this Valentine's Day with all the bitter vitriol and disdain we can muster, what do we do with it? There is, of course, the time-honored approach of copious alcohol consumption coupled with ye olde drunk text (or, as its practitioners refer to it, yedoldtxk). There are S.A.D. parties which, try as they might to prove their monikers misnomers, succeed primarily in doing the same as the former approach but with one's friends around to add their own tears to the pool.

Those in relationships likely succumb to one or more of the monstrous heads of the grim jewel-colat-ower triumvirate. Then they probably do what they do every night (Pinky): try to beat back the ennui! Your exact mileage on this expedition may vary, but your destination of Vague-Sense-of-Disappointmentropolis will still read Population: You by morning.

I snark this not just because I'm cynical (and, predictably, single), but also because I do honestly believe that Valentine's Day, or the discourse that surrounds it, sets up peculiar expectations upon those in relationships and those single, expectations which blanket condemnations of the practice or uncritical obedience to its prescribed principles do little to avert. If you are in a relationship, you must honor and adulate your loved one on this day or be found lacking in sufficient affection, and even if you succeed the choice to do it was made for you, cheapening the gesture. If you are not in a relationship, you already are lacking and this simply reminds you that Everyone Else is Having an Awesome Time At Life Except You. Moar ice creamz and pity hook-upz plz!

This is not a celebration of love. It's a beauty pageant without the bikinis (and that's just because February don't do midriffs, yo). Those of us unlucky enough not to even make the initial cut watch the others trot on stage and, yeah, someone does win, but even the rest of those competing look at those few winners and instead see what is missing in themselves.

Love is always difficult. It is difficult in inception, difficult in sustenance, difficult in dissolution. This is poignantly true in romance but no less applicable to its familial and friendship variants. It is difficult because we are all beautiful, mundane, mediocre, messed-up people who need each other in order to lift ourselves up and guard against our darknesses and despairs. And yet, when we do love, we find that those we turn to turn out to be, in one way or another, just as good and bad as we are.

But love has some indescribable appeal, some inherent necessity that, at least for me, makes life a thing more than a meandering march towards oblivion. To love, to care is the antidote to our apathy, our alienation. It is not an equal exchange of affection, mere insurance against isolation; it is a passion greater than its parts and participants, a meaning in and of itself.

And yes, this may be romantic excess, and, yes, love is many things to many people. Yet I cannot help but ponder, but wish for a day that would celebrate love in all its sundry shades. Or, perhaps, we need not a day or a month or a year, but a lifetime. Certainly, we can use reminding. But we don't need it in the form of lacks and lackings. Instead of buying and crying, hug a friend. Call a sibling. Kiss your significant other. Do it now, do it then, do it every day. Let Valentine's Day be a mere reminder among a million more that you are loving, you are loved and you are surrounded by others who need love just as much as you do. Now that would be something worth celebrating.