Valentine's Day and The Case for Hating It

I think many people like to proclaim that they hate Valentine’s day because other people manage to turn love or expression of love into something obnoxious. Then they try to turn it into a contest. They try to reduce the depth of what exists between two people down to how many roses, balloons, gifts etc. did you get? How expensive was your dinner? yadda yadda.
I woke up this morning feeling just fine about Valentines day. I even wore a pink sweater. It was really pale. More like blush as opposed to pink. My natural instinct when I realized what I was putting on was to swap it out for something neutral for fear coworkers would accuse me of being festive.. something I try never to be. But then I realized the outfit is cute and I’m running late soooooo get over it. Blush colored sweater and chocolate brown pants.. this is getting worse. Now I look like a human box of valentine chocolates. But it’s ok. I said, why hate on love. I love Love. So what if someone thinks I am festive. Just roll with it.

Then I got on the F train. The crowded, standing room only F train during rush hour where I saw the youngsters in this image. Now by the time I had a seat and could dig in my bag for my phone and get a good view to snap the picture, the train had cleared out a bit so that is why it doesn’t look like they might be inconveniencing people. But take my word for it.. they were! They were standing with all this non-sense. Balloons bumping peoples’ heads, people tripping over the huge child-size red gift bag and all I could think was “geez, how obnoxious!." I kinda wanted to smack them into their 30's. And I realized this is where the hatred for Valentines Day comes from. I mean I know that in high school your worth is measured by how many balloons you get from your guy and these two kids were just being high schoolers in love and maybe I’m just hatin’ because I missed the boat on dating an overly affectionate Hispanic male back in my day who would ride the train with all this crap. So I forgive these two. But I realized that it’s the obnoxious displays, the obligation, the expectation, and superficial ways to measure emotion that makes this day so repulsive to so many people.
But as I said, I do love Love and I love the idea of letting that special person know how you feel and no it’s not enough of an argument to say “I could show you how I feel on any day” because most of us don’t.
So Happy Valentine’s day! Or Happy Monday. Whatever works for you.