Well, it's that time of the year again. The snow is a distasteful blend of wet rain and melancholy. It's February. It's Valentine's Day. Sorry for sounding so miserable, but I've had a rough... life and I'm not ready to be bombarded by pink hearts and teddy bears and couples seated all around this damn cafeteria (and I'm here slurping my carrot orange juice yum). What is the point of this day, anyway. It's all about the consumerism. Think about Christmas- Santa Claus and presents. And what about Easter? That's all about bunnies and eggs of course. The first words that should come into mind are Jesus Christ but our capitalist society has moulded us into this consumer way of thinking. Valentine's Day? Chocolate hearts and red roses (so original). Today just gives us an excuse to wear an irritable amount of pink clothing and stupidly confess our "love" to crushes. We should show love to each other everyday. Seriously. And "love" is not whipping your hair around trying to impress that boy in your English class.
Again I begin to dwell on the definition of love. In my previous blog post about love (http://www.olgapoetrytree.blogspot.ca/2013/01/on-origin-of-love.html) I said that love was finding your other half, discovering the person with idealistic qualities. I disagree with myself now. The sad fact is that
love doesn't make sense.
So trying to label it, define it, confine it into a little box and put it on a cargo ship filled with other ambiguous terms (Peace, Freedom, Equality) doesn't make much sense either. Sure, we can have our secret desires (I want a man who is 7 feet tall and has the body of a God) and our inexcusable turnoffs (smoking, bad breath, over drinking) but when we look into the eyes of the person we love, we sacrifice some of our rooted beliefs. Think about it: if you change yourself to please your lover (as is so often the case) you're changing your human essence to appeal to a single person. Does this make much sense? Not at all. What if you don't want to sacrifice a single thing for the person you love? I think that you will be infinitely unhappy because nobody, I assure you,
nobody makes a perfect lover.
The oh so popular saying is true- nobody is perfect. Having unrealistic expectations will leave you feeling down. And drinking carrot juice by yourself on Valentine's Day. I look around at all these couples around me. A man in a freshly pressed suit and tie, big round glasses, sitting across a woman who is gazing at him with a semi-curious half-interest in what he's saying. She nods at him. He grins. Is this what love looks like? How about the couple right across from me. The woman eating a quaint salad, the man chewing on a shish kabob. Two Strawberry Blonde smoothies between them. Their toes touching. Then on the outskirts of this romantic oasis are the single people, the boy with a book in his hand, the girl watching what seems like some sort of Korean drama, the janitor resting, the girl leafing through Advanced Calculus. Do they know what love looks like?
Love doesn't look like anything. Unless it's in a box with its friend Peace. It's a lifeless mass without form, without much meaning in itself, without a label, without a unanimous definition. It seems to be without sense. Yet it is exactly this thing that we all seek- a thing that is completely senseless. I can't imagine of a single person who wouldn't want to be loved. It's an intrinsic human need and the most powerful human emotion. The Taj Mahal was built for love, for God's sake. Strawberry Blonde smoothies are shared in the name of love. We listen to bland office stories because we love the person who is saying them. We give love, spread love, make love, cherish love.
And we do it every damn day. Not just on February the fourteenth.
Comments
Post a Comment