Sunday was Valentine’s Day, which meant it was time for lots
of Facebook posts and tweets about How To Celebrate Valentine’s Day.
You see, Valentine’s Day is generally considered a
celebration of relationships, because couples are likely to buy each other stuff,
and a holiday celebrating couples buying each other stuff is a great way to
encourage that behavior. But because the commercial focus of Valentine’s Day is
on couples buying each other stuff, it means talking about relationships, which
is a touchy subject.
There are couples who take Valentine’s Day seriously and
couples who are self-aware or nonchalant about Valentine’s Day. There are
singles folks who get bitter about Valentine’s Day, get annoyed with
Valentine’s Day and the people who celebrate it, who act desperate for a
valentine, who don’t care about Valentine’s Day or who use Valentine’s Day as a
way to celebrate bro love or gal love or family love or hamster love or
whatever tickles your fancy.
All of them celebrate or at least acknowledge Valentine’s
Day, and a remarkable number of them share this on Facebook, for better or
worse. That’s fine. I’m happy to see couples post photos of their V-Day
escapades, or friends who get together to celebrate. The folks who frustrate me
are those who set up rules for celebrating in a way that is respectful for all,
the folks who don’t want you to trample the emotions of the poor, unfortunate
single people combined with the folks who want you to happily boast of your
love. This is impossible.
Look back to the third paragraph: I rattled off six or seven
different types of people with regard to V-Day, and there are obviously many
more. There is absolutely no way you can make a statement about Valentine’s Day
that will make you happy while simultaneously making everyone else happy. It
cannot happen.
There are obviously ways to minimize negative impacts – you
can share photos of the flowers bae sent you at work without tagging a newly
single friend in them, and you can tell everyone how much you enjoyed
Galentine’s Day without torching all couples during the celebration.
In the larger scope of shaming and (in)sensitivity, though, happiness is not a zero sum game. A photo of you or your son/daughter tossing a
graduation cap in the air is not an indictment on someone else who dropped out
of school. Hanging your marathon bib in your living room does not mean someone
who can’t – or doesn’t want to – run one is being slighted. And if a couple
puts up an adorable picture of the two of them in a romantic locale a handful
of times a year, it doesn’t need to be hurtful towards single folks – or if a
guy at work brags about a bro’s night he and his bachelor buddies shared, it
doesn’t mean he’s ridiculing the guy who took his better half to a luxurious
spa instead.
In years past, I’ve spent Valentine’s Day hanging out with
friends. That was fun. This year, as I have for the last three, I spent
Valentine’s Day with Miss Kazblog. That was also fun. At no time (that I
recall) did I feel like anyone who spent the day differently than me was out to
personally slight me, rub it in my face or otherwise. The implication when
someone talks about something good that happened to them doesn’t mean they’re
trying to needle you; more often than not, they might just be happy enough to
have to tell someone.
Just do what you want, guys. Live your life. Don’t go out of
your way to hurt other people. On the flip side, remember not every comment,
story or photograph has to be about you. Now, bring in the dancing lobsters.
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