Love isn't just for Valentine's Day

Exactly three years and one day ago, the day before Valentine's Day, the person I had loved the most passed away. Not a big fan of Valentine's Day, she taught me it was counterintuitive to shower your loved ones with gifts and attention for a single day of the year, and she showed me that to love someone means loving them every single day with a sustainable amount of love. Without a partner, she loved her children very much and for fifteen years focused on that – and her stellar career.

Once you lose someone, it calls for reflection. Therefore, what did I learn about love from her?

Love was, negotiating shorter working hours over a pay raise – such that you could leave the office at 4pm instead of 8pm – and be home with your children at 5pm after their school time. Love was, flying twice within the same day because you wanted to sleep in the same home as your kids. Love was, bringing home tiny little trinkets, like Sudoku puzzles or socks from the airport, because you had a bit of free time and thought of your children. Love was listening to your kids bitch about the mean classmate in the car or swooning over a boy at age 14. Love was being taught her iconic chocolate brownie recipe, setting up and planning her fourth 50th birthday party together, taking a yoga class together, going out for lunch, travelling together, taking over house-hold chores once the age allowed it, folding socks together, and never doing an assignment alone.

And there is so much more. However, love not only exists with parents. As you become an adult, you may find it more love within your siblings. It is, when your sister calls you in the middle of her workday as you lay at home with a high fever in a different country and she googles all the symptoms and possible medications you can take. Love is, her sending you texts every four hours reminding you to take ibuprofen. Love is wrestling with your brother or laughing together years after his comedic attempt to make risotto with ¾ of a bottle of white wine; the recommended amount is ½ to one cup, not three cups.

Love can also exist with friends. At university, friends become family. A call, a text, a small bag of green tea brought back from Japan because your friend knew you could not find anything remotely similar nearby. Talking for four hours on the phone, though you only spoke last week. Teaching each other your favourite hobbies, figuring out life together, and learning from each other, especially when it comes to the topics you never wanted to speak to your parents with – see the Sex Survey for results.

However, the most important form of love is the love you have for yourself. With a lack of family, friends, and coworkers, yes – life can be lonely. But it should not rely on another person or a partner. Self-love is the hardest form of love to maintain, as we are most critical of ourselves, in the way we look, act or succeed in life, and we never really celebrate it big – except perhaps on our birthdays. We can only sustainably celebrate our self-love by respecting our own time, energy and life most days.

I grew up not celebrating Valentine's Day and mostly spend the day celebrating my friend, Valentina. February 14th can be a beautiful day, but it has been overhyped and imposes too many expectations. People searching for a date on Valentine's Day has become a plea of desperation, its comedy only understood by matured adults. Jokes on social media can impose pressure on teenagers to treat this day as the holy grail – a day they naturally want to part take in, otherwise feel excluded from.

Valentine's Day does benefit restaurants and grocery stores capitalising on special “Valentine’s Day” lunches and Valentine’s Day chocolate bars, to which I see no problem. More money is more money. Businesses sell more gifts, but I often wonder if people would buy these gifts, even if it wasn’t Valentine’s Day. Is it the gift or the day? One of my favourite gifts I ever got from an ex-partner, – and I still have it – is a little ceramic coaster from the airport of Mallorca – a spontaneous gift I received after their trip. The had a matching one. The meaning, convolved with the timing, will always supersede the price tag.

Consequently, I do find small gestures on Valentine’s Day endearing. A small card or a thoughtful gesture to just re-iterate that you love someone dearly never goes wrong. It is consistency, that matters.

In summary, I think three things: First, one should find the diverse love hidden all around oneself, since “to find love” should not implicitly mean “to find a partner”. Second, to “celebrate love”, as Valentine’s Day is called, show a little more love at times when it calls for it and when it fits your life calendar, not because it as a random Friday mid-February. Third, physical gifts, only one of the five love languages, is given an unnecessary higher weight in our materialistic societies’ definition of love.