Valentine's Day: blasted banality
Photography by Esther T.
Roma Rodriguez offers readers some thought about Valentine’s Day.
Where I live, there are typically no queues outside shops on Fridays. Everyone is either desperately hurrying home or striding determinedly to the local boozer, ready to disport and unravel. However, this blustery and bitingly cold Friday afternoon was different.
There is a sombre looking, exclusively male crowd gathered around the florist, each face staring tiredly and undiscerningly at the shivering flowers. Clearly, no-one gives a damn about what flowers they buy. They just know they have to buy some. Five is the optimal number – any fewer and one risks being accused of parsimony, any more and it might not be worth it. After all, there is only so much one can receive as a quid pro quo. Now, what flowers should one choose? Invariably, red roses get the nod. No consideration is given to the seasonality of the flowers (red roses are in bloom in May-June; camelias would be a more apposite choice for February). No thought spared for their quality. Wilted, shrivelled, frozen, bruised, apetalous? No matter, anything will do. Any deformity will be overlooked. Just so long as it’s a bloody rose.
It’s hard to imagine who would be pleased, never mind touched, by such a thoughtless, mechanical, meaningless, tritely flaccid expression of “love”. Why on earth would you want to receive exactly the same gift as billions of people around the world? Are you not different? Isn’t your relationship suis generis? Alas, almost every recipient feels obliged to affect a smile. The more deluded, or duplicitous, even gush with emotion. No-one genuinely believes that a scintilla of emotional investment went into their partner’s decision to purchase the flowers. Yet, everyone goes along with the annual charade.
Most intolerably repulsive, however, is the notion that we need a specific day to articulate and demonstrate our affection. Surely, one should do that all-year-round? It’s simply the decent thing to do if one cares for another person. How emotionally incapable are we as a race if we need a world-wide event to force us to tell our “loved” ones what they mean to us.
Valentine’s Day is the bastard offspring of New Year’s resolutions, another deplorably platitudinous and vacuous exercise. Both exist to make one feel good about oneself, tacitly relieving us from the considerably more difficult task of practicing what we preach for the rest of the year.
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