Beyond the Usual Valentine’s Day
The thing about roses and a box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day is, it can often feel perfunctory, and even put a layer of camouflage over one’s real feelings.
Even when married, many of us feel awkward about saying, or asking for, the super-kind things we may secretly long to hear. It may have been years, even decades, since we received a love-letter … or wrote one. And Valentine’s Day is that one extra-special opportunity each year to figure out how to move past the usual constraints and commercial pitches to get, literally, to the heart of an important relationship.
Getting Started Too Late?
If too many of us get lost in this process, it may stem from attending to the holiday when it’s actually too late to do much about it. Grocers, florists and mall jewelers love our tardiness because it causes crowds to rush into their stores during commuting hours to stock up on high-margin items, to be delivered at home with virtually no returns. Restaurants love our desperation because it drives us to fill their reservations books, often pretending we made reservations weeks ago rather than within the last 48 hours.
I wonder, if we procrastinators had earnestly considered Valentine’s Day in, say, October, could we have done a better job? Probably. But let’s be honest; not many of us are likely to do that.
So here’s an alternate proposal of sorts: Use the occasion of Valentine’s Day to plan something to do together in September/October/November. By all means go out to dinner in February; but under the flicker of candlelight, pull out a map of Asia, or the south of France, or the Outback, and figure out how to get there from where you are now.
It’s never too late to build richer lives together; so let’s not forget to take the time to make those plans. After all, it’s in the planning and intertwining of our futures that we create a place for romance to thrive.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
