Happy Valentine's Day

So anyway...

Until I started posting things online, I don’t think that I had written the phrase “Happy Valentine’s Day” in a formal way since I was about seven years old. I’ve sent cards, of course, to friends, to my spouse (and to my mother, for Valentine’s Day is her birthday), but not a missive. It is one of those elements of life that is probably interesting to some strange person somewhere, but certainly not to me. I’m not going to give the matter a second thought.

Well, maybe a second thought. When I was seven years old, what did I possibly know of Valentine’s Day? It was a holiday--those were awfully important in grammar school.  (Remember decorating classrooms with autumn leaves, Ninas, Pintas, and Santa Marias, pumpkins, turkeys, Christmas trees, snowflakes, Lincoln top hats, Easter eggs, flowers, or whatever else was appropriate? With all of the fuss, how did we ever learn anything?)  Anyway, it was a holiday, and it was undoubtedly the worst one of the year.

First of all, we didn’t get the day off of school. (How can any day be a holiday if you have to go to school?) Second, it was painful. I suppose it was not painful if you were well-liked, but I was the weird child, the one people picked on. And I was also the child who never got any valentines. Well, not never. I mean, I got some, but only token ones from the kids who sent them to absolutely everyone. (Although I do recall one little fledgling shit who actually sent them to everyone except me. I mean, really: who teaches second graders that kind of cruelty?)  And the kids were not the only cruel ones. The teachers back then always had everyone pass out the valentines right there in class. We would wander around the room, placing cards on various desks. Of course, I always brought one for everyone. (Both boys and girls. It can’t hurt to cover all bases. Turned out to have been rather prescient of me.) But no one returned the favor. So while Suzy Sweetheart and Peter Popular were enjoying digging their way out from the mountains of valentines that turned their desks into termite mounds (not exactly an appropriate image, I know, but it does reflect just about how I felt about the holiday) I was sitting there trying to crawl inside of my desk with the two lousy cards on it.

Such are the torments of the Valentine’s Days of my joyous youth. May they rest in peace with all of the other hells of my childhood.

Now the Valentine’s Days of my adulthood are much more palatable. For one thing, it was on Valentine’s Day that I met my former spouse, so it was an anniversary of sorts. True story (which some of you may have heard before): we were working at this greasy spoon in Evanston while we both attended Northwestern (note the clever, unobtrusive reference to my alma mater; it’s nice to have graduated from there, at least if you live in the Midwest--it sure sounds impressive). We met when some time in the winter when our schedules changed and we both ended up working mornings. Several years later we went back to our old schedule books (since we were in school we kept Chandlers assignment books, and we never threw anything away) on a whim, curious to discover exactly what day it had been when we first met. And there it was: February 14. Obviously a match made in heaven. At least for a while.

So all Valentine’s Days were fun for a while. And of course my daughter Julianne’s birthday is next week; she was born on February 19, 1992. I can hardly believe how old she is now; it seems less than a week since we woke up at 3 AM and made our way to the hospital where, a sleepless night and morning later, we found ourselves the parents of a second daughter. All in all, a fairly decent little holiday, I guess, if you do not happen to be the weird kid in the back of the room.

the meaning(s) of love

So anyway...

I thought that, with Valentine's Day coming up, I might spend a few minutes expounding upon the subject of love. 

A friend of mine once told me this:

“I believe the way we talk, the words we have, partially determines what concepts we have available, what tools we have for dealing with and clarifying reality around us and more importantly within us.  There are some areas in English, however, that greatly need expanding. English is one of the most plastic of all languages, adopts and absorbs and modifies anything from anywhere, yet it’s so stilted in some crucial areas.”

One of these areas, I’m convinced more and more, is that concept of “love.”  So much confusion and misconception could be cleared up just by adding some words to expand it from its simple singular existence into something that more accurately reflects the myriad ways in which we employ the word. It goes far beyond the romantic connotations.  Adding more words would add corresponding concepts into the national consciousness and clarity to the vagueness, and maybe a little revelation and self knowledge.  It could save a lot of wasted lifetime nationally.

The ancient Greeks had, what, 4 words for different types of love?  The Hopi Indians have a dozen.  We have one.  A person can say I love my car, my mom, my house, my artwork, drag racing, milkshakes, my lover, my song, freedom, my dog, flying, the smell of burning rubber, my country, my spirit, God, and even sports teams, and that person doesn't mean the same thing at all by each 'love.’ And when we do speak of romantic love, we don't love each person the same way.  It's not even about amount--they are just different, different frequencies and flavors, and sometimes not comparable.  

I think that making assumptions from the vagueness of language causes a lot of problems and damage. People automatically assume the other person is talking about the same concept/emotion/experience they mean just because they're using the same word.  I think English needs some tuning up clarifying words. Maybe we should add some.

It probably won’t matter though.  No matter how many words you have in your vocabulary for a concept, it doesn’t matter if you don’t truly believe in the concept in the first place.  We give it lip service, but we don’t pay attention.  I think that’s what our problem really is: too many of us “love” our cars and our houses and our flags, but we have never truly learned what it means to love each other. 

And to love ourselves. 

Anyone feel like making up needed new words for very specific kinds of love?