It's a little late for Valentine's Day but no one ever really reads this page anyway, so who's going to care? I'm not a big fan of materialism, and that's what this holiday is all about. Oh, sure, it's about love and feelings for others, but you have to demonstrate it through material goods. There's something tawdry about the whole thing.
An example, though it's not directly related to Valentine's Day... Some time back, one of my supervisors at work got engaged. I came in and everyone was standing around, and she was showing the ring that he had given to her when he proposed, on her birthday as I recall. That's all well and good. What got me was that, afterwards, I heard several different people say, some directly to her, that because he gave her the ring on her birthday, it counts as a present, so if they break up, she doesn't have to give it back. "You can sell it and you don't have to give him a penny," she was told.
As far as I'm concerned, that goes beyond tawdry into the realm of utterly sleazy. Here she is, engaged for less than twenty-four hours, and some people are thinking of nothing but the monetary value of the ring and telling her how she can profit off of it if they break off the engagement! Jesus Christ, people, couldn't you just be happy for her for a single day before you started plotting her life without him?
Valentine's Day is much the same. It's about consumerism, and demonstrating affection by giving money to some large company somewhere that has convinced people that you can't care about a person unless you buy them flowers, or that you should spend two months of your salary on a diamond. (I wonder who started that one. Show of hands: Who can afford to dump 17% of their total income for a year on a rock?) What a crock of shit.
Mind you, there's nothing wrong with wanting things, but if you take it that far, if you judge the extent of a person's love by the size of the rock they buy or how much money they're willing to spend, you're just shallow beyond words. It really bothers me that some people out there can't do anything without mentally translating it into $$$$$$$$$, a$ if that'$ all life i$ about.
I gue$$, though, that for $ome people $$$$$$$$$ really i$ all life i$ about. There are people who really are that pathetic.
Sad, really.