My Valentine's day was blah. The fourteenth that fell on a Saturday was full of traffic, traffic and more traffic. Everywhere I saw girls carrying bouquet of roses, stuffed toys and chocolates. Men were clad in their best long-sleeved polos donned with the most expensive perfume yet just to impress the girl of their dreams. Others chose to wear "couple shirts" expressing their deep love and loyalty to each other.
And then there were the lodges that were mighty full. In the downtown area where a lot of these places reside, couples could not seem to get enough of each other. If only they could speed up time so the time would be theirs. It was a sight that I have seen for the first time in my life.
On the other hand, the restaurants were fully booked. Each and every table had a reservation for either a couple, a family, or a group of friends. Everybody wanted to celebrate the day of hearts along with the rest of the world.
Of course, there were the singles who celebrated their solitude wearing black clothes, short shorts, red lipstick with a bottle of beer in their hands. Each of them gave a toast to a life of independence, but they were happy anyway chit chattering the night away. Those were just many of the faces that I saw on heart's day as I was roaming around town looking for a good story to tell in between heavy traffic jams and the surge of people.
Not that the day mattered to me, I could not even care less! Valentine's day has become too mainstream this year. It has become an avenue for business establishments to prosper due to mindset that everybody should celebrate the feeling of love together. Others enter into a state of despair, looking for a pair on that day so to fill the void inside. But I realized two major things while the rest of the world had hearts on their eyes.
First, love is not just good for one day. It is eternal. It resonates as long as both parties choose to do so - regardless of lovers, family, or friends. Just like any other occasion to celebrate, we can always show love even it is Valentine's day or not. That is the problem with the generation today: they go where the bandwagon is, thinking that this would give them more thumbs up on their social networking sites.
Second, there is no need to be sad if you have no one to share it with (given that you subscribe to the fact that having a date is a must on Valentine's day). The community that you are in needs you. Those who have nurtured you to be the person that you are today are also in dire need of your love and affection which you probably have not given thought of for the longest time in forever. And what about your country, doesn't she need your love, too? Especially now when everything is in chaos, officials try to decipher an unlikely event by grueling high rank personalities in hot water.
The world is topsy-turvy and the generation continues to defy the rules of the norm because this is the post-modern era. What may have been right today may not be the same tomorrow. But the values remain. Just like how people define love before maybe different from how the young conceives it now.
This entry may seem two days late but love is celebrated every day. Take a breather and realize: is your life just worth contemplating about because you do not have anybody to share it with? Or you choose to keep going because there is a greater picture waiting for you to be painted? Your fingers color the canvass. Each one of us are artists in this generation story.