By Nadja Alexandra 11C
We all understand that to a scientific degree, the social construct of love is there to support our search in our species to find a life partner. You and this life partner contribute to society by having children, gaining credit and simplifying living circumstances. It is also supported by our biology. Love at first sight being the behavioral response to a hormone called oxytocin. Our attraction is based off maternal bone structure and complementary immune systems. To reproduce healthy offspring and increase social bonding. These things are in the controls of nature, independent to days in the calendar.
Valentine’s Day, the celebration of love, was not always so. The day is red with the blood of history’s least fortunate and is arguably a capitalistic ploy to get people to buy things they don’t need. Buy this for her, that’s the only real way to express your love. Take him to this place, you’d be selfish not to. Buy this, buy that, this too, also that. It’s quite clever when you think about it. The emotion most famous for making a fool out of any person seems to be one of the most profitable. Yet after knowing all of these things, we still get overpriced pink paper with pretty font.
Why? Why do you buy your significant other a gift today even though it was their birthday two months ago? Why do you give chocolates to a lover in the shape of hearts rather than squares? Why do we overcomplicate, embellish and romanticize a single day?
It’s because you care. It’s because you love them. Whether it’s February 14th or March 17 or any random date on any random month. We share chocolate on the fourteenth because the world is selfish. We send kind letters to that person across the room because the world is hateful. We exchange whispers of tender affection beneath the moonlight because some of us seek purpose in this darkness. We as human beings ache for reciprocation, for socialization. The meaning of love transcends all its different sounds from “cinta” to “amour”. We all gamble in this game of life and the risk of pain for immense joy is worthwhile when it’s all we have.
Flip off the cynics because love is love is love is love. It’s not wrong to want to share kindness through a gesture. It is not unnatural to make someone feel safe and wanted. It comes to us just as naturally as does cruelty; maybe even more so. On this February 4th, there should be no hate. Only the joy of love. Even if that means only a minute, a second of that love. The love you give romantically, the love you give platonically, the love you give to your work and the love you give to yourself. Who cares if it’s cheesy to give your partner their favorite flowers? Buy that cake for your girlfriend or pay for that carousel ride with your best friend. Express your love because so many of us can’t.
And to those reading this in disgust, I can only apologize. I apologize that you feel the way that you do and that you have been hurt by the world in its betrayal. These words are written by the hands of a cynic; a cynic who hates practically every waking moment on this spinning rock. And this cynic is telling you, in the name of whatever god or force existing, to love.
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