Valentine's Day

Isn't it odd that often times singles resent Valentine's day? Isn't it odd that Valentine's day has anything to do with specifically romantic love anyway? Before you pass this off as yet another: "A day to show someone you love them should be everyday" sort of things, just pause, and ponder the questions I just posed, then rest easy because this is not one of of those sorts of things.


I don't resent Valentine's day, once, in 7th grade, I had a valentine. He gave me a neclace and when we "broke up" I gave it back and made him cry. Thus begins the complex issue of "love" that this Valentine's day poses. I'm quite content to consume brownies I made for myself and spend time with friends who are both single and not. I'm quite content knowing that I have the perfect company of my God and that it's likely most males I know right now are more like the 7th grade boy I once knew than the object of Biblical masculinity I wait for. It's easy to not resent singledom when you've learnt how dramatic and messy young relationships between two perpetual children can be. It's also easy not to resent singledom when you've come to the conclusion that most of the reason you're single is of your own will. I refuse to fall for any male who is not a man (in the mature, biblical sense) and who isn't in the process of pursuing me in a dignified and mature way. So there, no reason to resent Valentine's day.


It's possible too, that the reason we celebrate Valentine's day is not so that every girl can be given flowers and every boy a good lay ( sorry for the bluntness) but possibly it's for the mere notion of love which is utterly seperate in certain occasions from sexual attraction. Lust and love are very different and these days Valentine's day is considerably based on lust. If it is truly based on love then let the romantic notion flourish but not diminish the friendly notions either. Let the single person feel equally as appreciated as the significant other. Let lingerie and fuzzy handcuffs be as common place as a good conversation or shared meal with a plutonic friend, or relative.  If Valentine's day is really based on love, then let the person single and taken feel equally involved as though it weren't merely about lust.


So therefore, let me not feel excluded from this day of passion and flourishing love merely because I didn't buy extra burt's bees for the evening or breath mints for the night. Let me feel very much included because I love to the fullest that a non-comitted person can. That I make the choice to serve others just as people in committed relationships choose to serve one another. Let us all realize that singlehood is temporary and someday you will be waking up next to a stinky morning breath and doing someone else's dirty laundry. Let us single folk love Valentine's day as much as the utterly infatuated highschool couple who just discovered the power of sexual attraction and who have yet suffered it's messy effects.