Valentine’s Day is a day full of love, laughter and celebration with a significant other (a little late-night celebration if you’re lucky). It’s a day when you tell your lover how much they mean to you.
But there’s a question that lingers: why do we need Valentine’s Day for that? And before you think I’m bitter about Valentine’s Day, hear me out.
Why is it that we wait until every Feb. 14 to show those who mean the world to us just how much they matter? Why do flowers become a necessity? Paragraphs are now poetic and dinner reservations are cherished because the calendar is telling us to care. There is nothing inherently wrong with Valentine’s Day. Rituals can be fun, and they give people a reason to slow down and express meaningful appreciation for the relationships (platonic or not) in their lives.
Still, love does not operate best on a calendar.
Valentine’s Day is beautiful, but it is also performative. A giant teddy bear with heart-shaped chocolates really doesn’t compensate for the eight months of emotional laziness. And posting a photo captioned “my forever” doesn’t mean anything if you were struggling to stay present on a random Tuesday in November.
And here is where I really want you to hear me out: be stupid for love.
Not the kind of stupid where you are tolerating disrespect, infidelity and the loss of yourself. But the kind of stupid that means you are soft. The kind of stupid where you are shamelessly expressive about the one you love. Stupid as in sending a long sappy text, holding hands in public and planning that surprise for no reason.
Being stupid enough to care and show your love out loud.
We are in a time where detachment is cool. Nonchalant-ness is the protection for too much emotional availability and pretending that you don’t care makes you cooler and powerful. But there is nothing cool about withholding feelings, especially when it comes to withholding feelings for the people you love the most.
If you love someone, tell them on Feb. 14, of course, but also make sure to tell them on March 3, Nov. 8 and Dec. 10. Tell them on that random Monday after a bad chemistry lab, at times where you’re tired and when they are doubting themselves.
Love is not about a grand gesture once every year. It’s about the daily decision to choose someone over, over and over again.
Valentine’s Day is not the problem. The problem is thinking the day should be the only time you love out loud.
It might feel silly, it might feel stupid and maybe even scary. But anytime the universe gives you the opportunity to show the people around you how much you love them, you do it. And even if you do it every day, Valentine’s Day is just another day to do it.
Life is already rough and tough. And we must seize any and every moment to love on the people around us as much as we can. It might be stupid to you, but that memory lives forever even when one of you does not.
Time moves faster than we could ever expect it to. We do not always get a warning or a notification before things change. This is why love cannot be postponed.
Being stupid for love is refusing to live with any emotional regret.
Because one day, the flowers and Instagram captions won’t matter. But what will matter are the ordinary days when we showed up without being asked. The laughter in between moments of stress. The memory of feeling chosen consistently.
We spend so much time protecting ourselves from looking foolish, we forget how much damage silence can do. How many relationships fall off not because the love faded, but because the expression did?
So be stupid for love, not just on Valentine’s Day but for every day you are lucky to have it.