Joining in on Faux Holidays - Two reasons to commit to the bit...
I went for a walk yesterday, and on the drive home from the woods three ideas were circulating around my head, like chatty birds in the springtime.
A post by a friend about how Valentine's Day highlights hardship for those who have lost loved ones or are single.
A blip of an idea from a Kurzgesagt Youtube Video (Educational mini science posts totally worth checking out)... Which posited that once our minds are able to live outside of our bodies, the feelings associated with tactile experiences like romance or an embrace will become skewed, and the depth of a word like love may be lost when it is no longer experienced by a physical body.
The practice of giving Valentine’s Cards or gifts as children, which is in some ways absurd when you aren't yet cognizant of what romance or adult heartbreak is like.
Like most holidays, I often find myself asking, why bother? What reasons are there for participating in holidays like Valentine’s Day?
I grew up in a home that viewed holidays as commercial or religious manipulations imposed by society as a means of increasing economic growth and emotional control.
I remember, as a small child, hand making and giving valentine’s cards for school, and experiencing the choreographed role play of relationship creation and destruction, at a time where ‘love’ exists more as friendship. Today I realized that perhaps a big part of children participating in Valentine’s Day, is learning to discuss actions of love, and also learning to experience rejection, something we all inevitably encounter. Valentine’s Day charades are the dress rehearsal for the real show of life in which we have to communicate about adult love.
So here is reason one... It is good to create dialogue and practice communication about love, which is often viewed as a complicated and taboo subject by younguns. We should normalize discourse about love, relationships, and their complexity, and learn about the various forms that love can take, and how to process rejection.
Despite the staunch unemotional perspective on Valentine’s Day, and other holidays, which existed in my home as a child... as an adult my views have softened. I spent most of my twenties with a surrogate mother-in-law who celebrated all of the small things, and sometimes these actions seemed lost on a house full of teenagers, but still, I watched as her children collected years worth of memories, a gift they will keep until they are old.
I believe that living is hard enough as it is, any chance to celebrate with the people whom you care about, is also an opportunity to create a meaningful moment. Science agrees! Did you know that humans fixate significantly more on negative experiences than positive ones? Our minds are built to remember traumatic things more deeply. Mindfulness practices however, encourage us to make a habit of celebrating small positives more often. Doing so actually helps productivity as we are inclined to return to feelings of positive development and reward, and over time this attitude rewires our brain to stay more positive in general!
So here you have it, Reason number two. I urge you to take a moment out of your day, and to tell someone you love how you feel, and choose to celebrate that shared connection with them. While you still exist in your corporeal fleshy form, trade in a hug for some shared endorphins.
Let me know who you love and why! I’m at @cleaanais on Insta