On Valentine’s Day, I intend to tell my friends that I love them. I’ll call home and say “I love you” to my mom, and perhaps to my annoying little brother.
Centuries of traditions align the holiday with lovers, but it’s a celebration of love at its core. I think college students would appreciate it more, if they thought about it in broader terms.
Most of my Valentine’s Days have been miserable affairs—from the elementary school parties where we were forced to give everyone a valentine even if we didn’t like them to high school when people dressed in red, carrying roses and giant teddy bears, reeking of chocolate; and now, college where everyone plans dinners and a night on the town.
I’ve been a bitter single on Valentine’s Day, depressed about being alone.
Yet, I realize twenty years late, hilariously enough I’ve never been alone.
Sure, this may sound cheesy, but my friends and family have always loved me. If you think about it, whom do you love the most consistently: a friend, a family member or a lover?
A lover may be the most passionate, but there’s nothing like family and friends are the family we’re blessed enough to choose.
As college students, there’s nothing more unpredictable than a boyfriend or girlfriend. A relationship could end at any moment.
But your family will be there to console you, and your friends to glue your shattered self back together.
I’m delightfully suffering a bout of unrequited love at the moment, and it’s my friends who listen to my moaning and tolerate my wild mood swings. They prevent me from dissolving into syrupy goo. Though my crush may not care for me the way I’d like, he still loves me.
Valentine’s Day consecrates love, but what is it?
We’re all young and in love with something or someone, or thinking we’re in love with something or someone. We all want love. Yet, a lot of my friends—single or attached—want it, but can’t define it.
There’s such a narrow view of love in popular culture; it’s always associated with couples—either getting married or in the throes of passionate sex.
But, interestingly enough, linguistically speaking, the ancient Greeks were more generous in their concept of love.
There is eros (erotic love, more like popular culture’s depiction of love), philia (friendship, fondness or loyalty) and agape (in a religious sense, the love of God for humanity; generally, an unconditional love).
I could tell my crush: I love you; I can tell my mom: I love you; or I can say, I love poetry. All the same word, different types of love, but love nonetheless.
In “Ball and Chain,” Janis Joplin says: “I don’t understand why half the world is still crying, man, when the other half of the world is still crying too.” Our desire for connection haunts us from birth to the grave, but we can’t simply limit it to sweet nothings between lovers.
I’d like to think that there are very few people who are truly alone, who don’t love or aren’t loved.
This Valentine’s Day, if you’re a single in need of cheering up, remember your friends, call you family and remind yourself of the things you love: music, books, filmmaking, dance—anything!
I can’t stand to see someone cry. If, like Joplin says, half the world is sobbing then I say we remind each other how wide love is, its scope like arms. Call home. Eat dinner with friends. Do what you love.
Reach out; let everyone you care for know how much you love them this Valentine’s Day.
Derrick Austin can be reached at daustin@ut.edu.