HS: Lost Love?

It is Valentine’s Day. You walk into class and head to your desk with a highly decorated box in one hand and a bag of little Valentine’s Day cards and fun-sized candy addressed to each member in your class in the other. The teacher gives all the students time before recess to walk around the classroom and hand-deliver their gifts. You have been waiting for this day your entire life. You make sure to slip an extra piece of candy in your crush’s box. However, you are too nervous to give away your identity, so you take the incognito approach and address their card unique from the others: “From: Your Secret Admirer.” You are in the second grade. Has much changed since then?

Valentine’s Day is what I like to call a money-is-the-meaning holiday. These holidays, like Christmas, have such a wholesome meaning behind the day that is skewed by corporate America’s scheme to trick suckers into spending immense amounts of cash on their products in order to make an impression on others. Valentine’s Day is about showing love to others. However, as an pre-college, adolescent human being without a paying career or a wedding happening in the near future, I would like to speak for the vast majority of students and solidly claim that this holiday is a bit overhyped.

It is obvious that Valentine’s Day is targeting the relationships that lean to the romantic type. Because of this, it is extremely common to find adolescents generalizing the holiday to fit all type of relationships. Why? Seldom you will find teenagers in emotionally invested relationships or actively trying to discover their soulmate. Teenagers already have enough on their plate trying to navigate and solve personal problems before reaching adulthood. For some, the last thing they need is to deeply invest into someone before figuring out themselves.

Will a Kay Jeweler commercial persuade me to buy a visually blinding ring for the beautiful individual I know? Sure. I have sufficient funds to complete that transaction. Am I likely to take my significant other to a fancy, candle-lit dinner date, recite love poetry while on a walk under the stellar night sky and reminisce about the moment I met my true beloved? Of course! I am a married man. Hopefully, you are picking up on the sarcasm in my responses.

To be blunt, I just have to say that Valentine’s Day is overrated for a certain crowd, and it is the crowd I am a part of. Maybe my perspective will morph as I get older. For now, I will take all the free candy I can get.