Part I, or "The Valentine's Hangover"

Have to run, meeting some friends for dinner!

But before I go, I have to go through my yearly post-Valentine routine.

Every mid-February, in the aftermath of Valentine's Day, I try to get the last remnants of it out of my system, pass the consumerist hangover, if you will.

Love.
With a capital 'L'.
Such a heavy weight for such a little word!
That ever-abundant, never-ending source of inspiration/pain/happiness/sorrow/(fill in the blank) that's baffled and inspired philosophers, writers and musicians and been so overloaded with false expectations since the dawn of time that no one can live up to it.

Let's face it.
Love’s not about getting your significant other a box of expensive chocolates, going out to dinner, spending a romantic night together, as Valentine-philes would have you believe.
What's love got to do with that?

No, I'm talking about the bigger picture.
The corny, sappy love Hallmark bathes their cards in.

Love's about having someone to share the good times with and to help through the bad times.
Someone to spend all weekend in bed with on those cold winter months.
To feed hot soup to and tuck into bed when she's sick.
To give a back rub to after a long day of work.
To stand around patiently for hours for while she tries out a new pair of shoes.

Taking in every breath of hers, spending a lifetime memorizing every pore of her.
Someone whose very thought of makes it worth it to wake up in the morning, no matter how screwed up your week may be going.

It's all about that someone who tears down your walls and makes you break all your rules, leaving you so defenseless that you're left no choice but to let them in.
Someone who completes you (thanks, Jerry McGuire).
That missing piece of the puzzle that you never knew was missing until you found.

It's a funny thing, love.
When you're 15, all you care about is chasing all the girls you can and hittin' that!
(Btw kids, more on this later. Check the P.S.)

And all of a sudden, before you know it, you've hit 30.

And overnight, you're slapped straight across the face with the reality of your own fleeting existence (Crap! You're not a kid anymore. Your 20's are gone and you're less than a decade away from 40!)

It's one of those eye-opening, life-changing moments life throws your way now and then. They're few and far between, but those freebies represent a quantum leap into maturity.
Like that moment in elementary when you discover girls don't have cooties and having them around maybe doesn't suck as much as you thought.

Priceless wisdom.

In my case, the last one happened with that 30-something epiphany where you suddenly realize the eventuality of your own existence.
Here one day, gone the next. Time slipping through our fingers, faster every day.

And in that eye-opening you moment, you see it all in crisp, high-definition clarity:

What once meant getting tied-down becomes the most liberating concept.

It's not all about chasing skirts anymore. Maybe what you thought was fun, careless 20-something sex was just an unconscious way of filling that void you didn't know you had.

Maybe the little time you do have left should be spent putting that puzzle together. Finding that missing piece that completes you and makes you a better person.
And if all goes well, you're the piece that completes her puzzle, too.

Don't get me wrong.
That doesn't mean you're going to get your wife-to-be overnight...maybe you never will.
There'll still be the occasional casual hook-up here and there, which might turn into something more, or might not last past the first night, but the possibility of being with 'The One', an idea you never even contemplated, becomes something increasingly feasible.

But I guess that's what growing up does to you.

And I guess that's what love is.

Why then, would you trivialize that with something as empty as Valentine’s Day?

P.S.:
If there are any 15 year-olds reading this, listen to an old man (which you won’t, but I’m gonna tell you anyway):

Ask her out.
She’s just as nervous and insecure as you are.

And trust me, in the immensity of the universe, where we're but dust in the wind, blowing for less than a fraction of a nanosecond in this microscopic speck of dust floating around in the grain of sand that is the sandbox of our galaxy in the infinity of the universe, trust me, it's no biggie whether she says "yes" or "no". You have nothing to lose.

-G-