Be your own valentine

Do you remember sending valentines when you were a child? Can you recall the beautifully covered shoebox, decorated with glitter and doilies, full of tiny valentines and heart candies? Or perhaps the first serious Valentine’s Day gifts you received, or your first delivery of one dozen red roses?
Receiving a Valentine’s Day gift is a magical experience. It makes people smile, sometimes even feel a bit giddy. After all, this holiday is not about obligatory gifts. When you receive a Valentine’s Day gift, you know the giver cares about you.
Valentine’s Day, is just a day to show the ones you love how much you care. Friends and family routinely send Valentine’s Day cards; even moms get valentines from their own children.
This Valentine’s Day, why not take the time to appreciate someone who rarely gets your attention; someone who deserves a thoughtful gift and a few kind words? Someone like – you! Whether you are single or attached, Valentine’s Day is the perfect day to send yourself a gift of thanks and appreciation. This year, why not be your own valentine?
In your list of things to do each day, where do you factor in? Most women focus on meeting the needs of others before taking care of themselves. Over time, depriving yourself of a much-needed break or indulgence can cause you to feel weary, even a little sad. Still, a special gift and some self-care can be just the pick-me-up you need.
Start thinking of Valentine’s Day as a time to celebrate you. Prepare to treat yourself in the same way you prepare to send a gift to your partner or special friend. Be as thoughtful for yourself as you would be for the important people in your life. Carefully planned gifts always stand out among the last minute trinkets and candies. Take the time to consider what you would love to receive.
Perhaps you have resisted buying a special piece of jewelry, or a beautiful dress. Maybe you would love to have a day at the spa, but have put it off due to time constraints. Even if you are on a budget, there are small indulgences that would make a perfect gift to you. A box of French milled soaps, a new pair of shoes, or perhaps a magazine subscription.
Being your own Valentine also means taking the time to celebrate. Take a two-hour lunch break from work and treat yourself to a meal at a nice restaurant. Snuggle up to watch your favorite movie with yummy snacks. Have a long soak in a bubble bath with a glass of champagne. Spend the day meandering through the cute antique shops you always meant to check out, but never got around to finding the time to explore.
However you decide to care for yourself this Valentine’s Day, remember in order to be your own valentine, you will need to send yourself a card. Write a thoughtful note to yourself, listing what you love about yourself, and why you know you are special. Put the card in the mail ahead of time, so that it arrives in before February 14th.
Make being your own valentine an annual tradition, a time when it’s okay to take time off to take care of you. It’s the perfect time of year to pay extra special attention to your own needs and desires, to have the kind of fun you like to have, and to notice your unique loveliness.


A hallmark holiday?

Many people complain that Valentine’s Day is nothing more than a “Hallmark holiday” dreamed up by businesses seeking to profit from the desperate masses seeking love.
When lovers singing their romantic feelings to their chosen ones, they started writing sonnets and other love poems to give to their romantic interests. By the 18th Century, Valentine’s Day became extremely popular throughout Great Britain and lovers began to exchange token gifts alongside their valentine cards. Amongst the commoners, this gift was often a small sweet that could be obtained with meager funds. In the upper classes, the gifts became more and more extravagant and included large boxes of chocolates, sweets, and even jewels.
In the 1840’s, Esther A. Howland began her company producing valentines in the United States. She became known as the Mother of the Valentine, producing beautiful cards of coloured paper, lace, and ornate lettering. By the late 19th century, valentines were produced in factories by Norcross, later to be known as Hallmark.
These factory-produced valentines grew to encompass more than just declarations of undying love and devotion. As society changed and moved away from formal courtship, the valentines began to cover more light-hearted messages of humour and affection. These valentines showed the worth of their love.
Love may be priceless, but lovers are paying a high price to maintain it!

A romantic peak or a commercial basement?

Every year there is a surge in romantic interest as February, the Month of Hearts, approaches, and the scent of Valentine’s Day begins to waft in the air. When it comes to reality, though, how much of that surge is genuinely about romance? Is it not all a commercial exercise designed to rake in the profits?
I do not think anyone can argue that commercial interests contribute greatly to the publicity that surrounds Valentine’s Day. You see it everywhere from Christmas onwards; the Valentine’s cards, the Valentine’s chocolates with their heart shaped boxes and pictures of roses, plus of course all the advertisements for the roses themselves and how you must book early for that Valentine evening meal.
The commercial side of Valentine’s can appear so overwhelming you may be persuaded to believe that it is nothing to do with love and romance at all, but purely about making money; that the hearts and the roses are nothing more than artificial symbols of a romantic world that no longer exists.
With much of Western society having a hardened veneer, where underneath relationships fall apart with a puff of wind, and divorce is almost built into marriage, anyone can be forgiven for taking such a cynical view. However, dismissing the whole Valentine Day experience as nothing but commercial is far too simplistic, and to do so is to deny oneself a far richer experience: that of genuine romance and love.
Any commercial venture only succeeds if there is a demand, and Valentine’s Day has been a commercial success for many years. Before then, the Valentine’s tradition itself had evolved over many centuries, long before commerce became the apparent driving force behind it. So where has the modern demand come from for an event such as Valentine’s Day?
Love, attraction, obsession, and romance are as old as the hills, and are integral to the human constitution. While many modern people may claim that they prefer to be alone and do not need anyone else, do not need love and romance in their lives, if they were truly honest with themselves they may say something very different. It is not “macho” to publicly need love, affection and romance, so many hide from their own truth, that they probably yearn for the love of another as much as the most openly romantic.
Others, though, reflect as much desire for romantic love as any man or woman over the centuries, and it is deeply natural to do so. They reflect those desires as they go searching for romantic fiction, love poems and true love stories by the million. If they do have love in their lives as Valentine’s Day comes around, then they are well prepared to make the most of it; to indulge in the romantic image with their own twist of reality and desire.
Love and romance have not died and will never die. Some may shy away in fear of the pain of a failed or a tragic romance; but others dive in head first, not fearful that their love will turn out to be as tragic as Romeo and Juliet. Such people provide the never ending demand for a Valentine’s Day that transcends the commercial and explores all the bright and dark corridors of romance. In other words, experience life to the full, and risk the pain and heartache to achieve the ecstasy.

Do Indians need to celebrate Valentine’s Day?

India is known for its culture and heritage. Indian families are known for their warmth and hospitality. In this context love has always had a much deeper meaning than a mere exchanging of flowers, candies and gifts.
In many parts of India when ‘love’ is spoken about, a stigma is always attached to it. It is more the western concept of love or rather the outward expressions that are loathed. Indian couples who imitate the westerners are not appreciated especially when it comes to ‘PDA’ i.e. public display of affection.
Similarly Valentine’s Day too is looked down upon by nationalist Indians because of the gross imitation of elements of western culture in its celebration. Further Valentine was not an Indian and he was a Christian.
In 2001, the violent protests by Hindu hardliners in the Indian capital failed to deter young lovers in urban India from celebrating Valentine’s Day. The nationalists would have every Indian supporting them in their moral policing against invasion of such a culture. But many of those who give themselves to celebrate Valentine’s day know that they are not just aping the west. They make it an occasion to celebrate their love relationship. In spite of protests from conservative factions the Valentine day celebrations have grown much larger.
Cultures are changing. They are never static. So too is the Indian culture. Valentine’s Day was never a part of Indian culture. It may be true that many youngsters misunderstand or undervalue Valentine’s Day as to be meant for unwarranted sexual involvement and promiscuity. Yet Valentine’s Day is an opportunity for each one to reaffirm one’s love. It needs to be taken in the right sense and not viewed as a day of PDA. In a democratic and secular country like ours people should have the right and freedom to choose and celebrate events such as the Valentine’s Day.
Valentine’s Day celebration is a recent phenomenon in India but has caught the fancy of people to a great extent. Though some see it as a western import and hesitate to celebrate, there exist a large and growing number of those who love the feeling behind the beautiful and romantic festival.
Especially to the Indian youth February 14 signifies love, a day when people express their affection for others. Just as several other countries, people in India too celebrate the Valentine’s Day by exchanging cards and gifts to express their love.

Where is my original valentine?

Love is in the air… Not just in the FM radios. Love quotes galore, love cards with splashy silver lining, colours pink and red running out of stock, reassuring lines “roses are red and violets are blue,” there is something mystifying for every young lover this season. This is all exciting. Wow, kudos to him – the man who began it all – he must be wonderful!
Valentine and love have become synonymous. But who coupled them? It was Valentine himself! The girl who thinks of her Valentine today must give a thought to the original guy who began it. After all a loving heart is no less grateful.
The original Valentine was put in prison. This was because he joined young couples in love by the holy marriage. Valentine had disobeyed the mad King Claudius who said “Young men who married make bad soldiers; they must not marry.” This was cruelty.
Valentine was the bishop of Interamna. He was called the “friend of lovers.” He secretly invited young lovers to come to him and got them married by the sacrament of matrimony. This made King Claudius in Rome angry because he had already abolished marriage. The king arrested Valentine. Execution for Valentine was impending. The king tried to advise Valentine to accept the Roman gods and denounce Christ who taught to love and live genuinely. Valentine instead tried to convert the king himself. Death for Valentine became certain. Valentine was clubbed, stoned, and then beheaded on 24th February in A.D. 270 – sad end for a person who wanted to promote genuine love found in marriage.
Valentine’s day is about true love, friendship, and faithfulness. It least suggests flirtations, carnal (‘fleshy’) love, or heightened fantasies of adolescence.
It’s not to say human romantic love is bad and sinful. The pope Benedict himself uses the word eros associated with human romantic love, to describe God’s love for humankind (in his first encyclical “God is Love”).
In a world where true love and values are on the decline, today’s youngsters can be models of true love like Valentine. They too have the opportunity to become heroes like St. Valentine.
Our hero is Valentine whose hero was Jesus himself who taught to love. On Valentine’s Day we celebrate love. When you circle February 14 on your calendar next time, you can remember who made this day for you to be in the circle of love.

FALLING IN LOVE

Valentine’s Day offers business, choice to identify the right boy or girl for life and above all the sweetest choice of falling in love. It offers an entire season with lovely options for both those seeking a little romance and the brokenhearted. Above all it is a season, to ponder about and to explore love!

What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails and puppy-dog tails’
And such are little boys made of.
What are young women made of?
Sugar and spice and all things nice,
And such are young women made of.

What all the world is made of ( 1820)
ROBERT SOUTHEY

he poet must have had his tongue in his cheek while writing these words. It seeks to present a summary of the scientific data on sex differences along with the major social implications that follow from these differences.
Our channels of mass communications are increasingly overloaded with sex symbols. The marriage manual has replaced the slim volume of verse on the engaged girl’s reading list. The hero in our fiction and drama has given way to a scruffy character you might call the anti-hero. Love, the post Freudian generation may tell you, is what happens in Victorian novels and old movies on television. Love is for the squares. Yet we all know, in the secret hearts we so casually deny, that love, for young and old, is the ultimate salvation. All who have loved and been loved recognise the great enduring truths in classic love poetry. Love does add a precious seeing to the eye. Love does soften brutes and add grace to virtue. And love does bear it out even to the edge of doom.
The romantic tradition could be defined as an un-self-conscious respect for an emotional arrangement between a man and a woman, with each side happy to express the best of its own characteristics. Within the framework of this tradition, there is room, on the one hand, for gallantry, for the courtly gesture; on the other, for feminine reserve and demureness and calculative pretty ways.
People like to indulge in the discussion of a particularly virulent and dangerous form of divine madness called “ falling in love;” which is from a practical point of view, one of the most insane things you can do, or that can happen to you. In the eyes of the person in love, the boy or a girl can appear to be a god or goddess incarnate. Everything might remind them of his or her loved one. Once you get into it, it is something like contracting a chronic disease, and we sometimes try to resolve it by making it the basis of marriage.
When we go back to its origins in the Hebrew and Christian traditions, we find that the idea of marriage and the experience of falling in love are rather separate things. In early agrarian cultures, no one ever chose their marriage partner. Largely marriage was an alliance of families. It was contracted not simply for raising children, but also to create a social unit smaller than a village. The elders had an enormous voice in deciding whom their children were going to marry. They would dicker amongst themselves and use go-betweens in considering not only whether this girl was suitable for their son, or vice versa, but also what kind of dowry she would bring, and whether it would be advantageous to the families to form such an alliance. Of course, until quite recent times, these things were always important in marital affairs of royal families.
In the feudal conception of marriage there came what was called “ the Cult of Courtly Love,” which was largely a result of the poetic movement centred in southern France during the middle ages. According to one theory, the knight or courtly lover, who was also a poet, would select a lady to be his heart’s desire – preferably a married lady-and he would yearn for her, sing songs under her window, and send her messages with little tokens of his devotion. But according to this theory, he could never go to bed with her. Not only would that have been adultery, but also it would have spoiled the state of being in love. The state of being in love was always to be an unfulfilled and unhappy state.
Falling in love is not a mere sexual infatuation; it is a much more serious involvement. Falling in love is a thing that strikes like lightening and is therefore extremely analogous to the mystical vision. At the same time it is important to realise that falling in love is not same as love.
Interestingly we say, “Falling in love”, and not “rising into love.” Love is an act of surrender to another person; it is a total abandonment. In love you give yourself over, you let go and you say, “I give myself to you.”
To many people it is madness because it means letting things get out of control, and all sensible people keep things in control. Actually, the course of wisdom, what is sensible, is to let go, to commit oneself, to give oneself up; and this is considered quite mad. It is thus that we are driven to the strange conclusion that in madness lies sanity.
Everybody has different ideas about love; we are all like those blind men before an elephant. For some love is a happy emotion, for some others love is a happy emotion, for some it means sadness, for some it is possessiveness, for others it concerns materialistic aspects. Everyone does not look at love from the same perspective. Love cannot mean the same for two different individuals.
There are many contradictions in life. The same goes true for love. In the hyper paced life of people in these modern days particularly in the metros and the big cities, ‘I love you’ has become an empty and casual expression, almost like a punctuation that crops up mechanically without deep feelings or emotions.
The gestation period between meeting the partner and falling in love has drastically come down. Like instant coffee and noodles, in this age even love seems to happen instantly! It looks as if love existed only in the good old days and today it has gone out of people’s lives.
Despite this love is very much alive and kicking. Many would like to hold on to it and make all kinds of sacrifices for love. Percentages might have changed. But love is very much present in our midst.
Many people express the fear that as the world surges to the space age and a materialistic life, life will be snuffed out. On the contrary, I believe that love will emerge stronger as mankind makes more scientific and material progress. When you have everything to live for in life, you are still ready to die for true love that is reciprocated.
Some responsible elders feel happy to see the youth falling in love; it is a sign of maturation. They speak of all the great men and women whose names belong to the ages loved- mind, heart, body and soul. And they carried their love proudly, as an army carries its banners.
Even the men one would imagine incapable of a sensitive or delicate passion nevertheless loved. Jonathan Swift, sometimes called “the hangman of humanity,” put down his cruel pen and wrote to his beloved Stella in baby talk. Among Swift’s personal effects, found after his death, was a lock of hair, wrapped in a small scrap of paper on which he had scribbled “Only a woman’s hair.” Dr. Samuel Johnson was so devoted to his wife, Tetty ( an unattractive lady many years his senior), that long after her death he kept her wedding ring near him. Keats, dying of tuberculosis, desperately lonely but of the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination.”
The heart, as another poet has said, is never given out of the bosom in vain. Of all unrequited loves, one of the most touching was that of William Hazlitt, the eighteenth-century essayist, for a common lodging-house girl called Sarah. Though she accepted Hazlitt’s gifts, Sarah mocked and deceived. When finally she left him for another, his wound was deep and bitter. Still, not long afterward, he could write to a friend, “When I am dead, who will love her as I have done? When she is old, who will look in her face and bless her ?” Heartbreak comes, but wisdom lingers. Listen again to Hazlitt, this man who loved not wisely but well. “Perfect love has this advantage,” he wrote. “It leaves the possessor of it nothing further to desire.”
February 14th is celebrated as a day for love, exchange of gifts, promises of eternal passion, and more. It is not only for the boy-girl friendship and love; it is a day meant for all who love. The inspired pen poems inspired by their love and admiration for the women of their dreams while others just go to shops and buy commercially available verses. Mutual sympathy is also possible for the lonely youngsters in the website mutualsympathy.com. It also offers moments to retrospect and to love one’s own self. Valentine’s day is made so real by all these.
Today, Valentine’s Day is celebrated as a holiday in some countries honouring romance. Boys and girls no longer pick names out of a jar just as we read in ancient history, but instead exchange valentines with token messages of affection. In the tradition of Great Britain, children often exchange small sweets, while adult lovers give each other large cases of sweets and gifts.
While the exact origins of Valentine’s Day are slightly murky, there is no doubt that it is not just a holiday from the modern times. Instead, it is a chance to both honour the history and modernity of romance and affection.

You have all the time in the world!

The sense of having only a limited time causes many people to fret and worry. The most valuable thing people can spend is time. Simply because there has to be an ending, they imagine that they peak at 50 or 40 even 20. An elderly US senator once commented on how the attitude of so little time suffocates the human spirit: “Most people say that as you get old you have to give up things. I think you get old because you give up things.”
Our world is made human by people with a quite different time sense. The great political leaders, scientists, social revolutionaries and great religious leaders, all of them had a very different time sense. The British novelist E.M. Forster once wrote of them: “The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society were eternal. Both assumptions must be accepted if we are to keep open a few breathing holes for the human spirit.”
Because they act as if life were eternal, the great ventilators of the human spirit always feel that they have time to be available to others. You can read their attitude in their faces and postures. The person who is at your disposal turns towards you, tilts a head, bends an ear, lights an eye.
What miracles that simple act of being available can work! All of us remember, almost as moments of grace, occasions when people have released our spirits just by lending us a sympathetic half-hour. Remember the elders who set aside a lot of time to be available to the young generation. Can we forget this sacrifice of theirs?
“Being available” is an attempt to put into English the French word disponibilite, the state of being at one’s disposal. Philosopher Gabriel Marcel, borrowing the word from financiers, who speak of “available funds,” coined this usage to describe a rare human quality. Marcel applied it to people who “open a line of credit” to other persons. We should all do that. Each of us should make available to others not what we own, but what we are.
Availability can be brief, but it must be sincere to ventilate the spirit. We find our casual friends saying, “Call me any time. I’m at your disposal.” But will they be on hand without grudging in your moment of crisis? And will they be there to toast, without envy, your good fortune?
Bored and lazy people have time, but may have little to offer. Time is what they want most, but sadly what they use worst. The people most available to us are often the busiest and most important.
Important, yes, but not self-important. Self – important people equate time with money. They are skeptical in relating with people because they lose time and as a result lose money. Gabriel Marcel noted that often people who are burdened with egos, money or degrees allow no one else to enter their inner worlds. They close themselves off. He called this crispation, to describe people who become crisped like dry autumn leaves.
Nothing “crispates” the soul faster than the delusion that it is too late. This delusion permeates our culture. We are told that “physicists do their most creative work before the age of 30.” Crispation makes us hermits. “There is no time!” we rail, and turn our backs on others and thereby on the future. We miss the best things in the world by fretting about the lack of time.
Time is a system of folds which only death can unfold. For many of us it is difficult to come to terms with time. It takes a sense of eternity to make one realise that there is time, time to be available and to create. When we don’t create we are dead
We are starting a new year. Let this year help us change our attitude towards time and people. Let us begin to say that we have enough time for the people who come to us.
Instead of saying we are limited by time and space, can we say we have time for others, and space for others? It begins in choice, I shall make time! I will not be closed off and crisped.
We must, of course, sometimes close the door to be alone with ourselves: alone with thoughts and books and soul and may be God. For only people with a strong inner core can be usefully available to others. Historian Arnold Toynbee called this “withdrawal and return.” In private hours we become the person who will be usefully available to others. Then we can offer them the gift, not of what we have, but of what we are. Be sure, then, that you have all the time in the world and so be available!

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