Valentine's Day is the day when love and lovers take centre stage. For those who are in relationships, it is a time to reaffirm feelings or else express them for the first time in a new way. Singletons have a harder time, but even some of those discover a secret admirer or a love they feel is returned. It is a celebration of love.
Love is universal and so is Valentine's Day. Valentine's culture has taken hold in countries as diverse as Iran and Japan. On February 14th in Japan, the onus is on women to give gifts of chocolates and flowers. A month later, men are expected to return the favour on White Day. Iran's government frowns on Valentine's as a western import, but many lovers celebrate the occasion anyway.
Unique Experience
Despite its universal nature, we each have unique experiences of love. Pinning down a precise definition of the word itself can become a futile exercise in categorising the sum total of human experience.
A definitive definition of love is virtually impossible to present and any attempt is always coloured by personal experience and prejudice. To me, love is a connection. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we form connections with those around us - our friends, family, partners, and even sometimes fleeting ones with complete strangers.
Love, in its broadest sense, can be applied to many of these connections. In some regards it can be considered a tie that binds us to other human beings. Most people would see the term 'tie' as something negative, but the reality remains that humans are a co-dependant species and not just in an emotional sense. Ties and commitments become what you make of them. If you carry them like a burden, then that is what they become. If they are enjoyed, they can be emancipation from loneliness, too.
Few of us would consider saying we love a street stranger. We separate, categorise, and develop. In some of our connections we have little choice. We can't choose what circumstances and to what kind of family we are born into, and they become our first experience of connecting with other people around us. Later in life, we get more choice in the connections we take up and develop, and which we discard. We can choose our friends and our lovers, although the choice doesn't simplify our lives; rather it complicates things immensely.
Separating all these different attachments can be tricky and hazardous. A common example of the sometimes fraught and contested nature of our emotional borders is friends and lovers. People love their friends as they would love their kin, in a platonic way. Sometimes those feelings cross the line. When that happens, it causes a great degree of angst, although the outcome is not always as disastrous as our fears would lead us to believe.
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