"I Just Don't Know What to Do, I'm Just Afraid to Love You."

Society creates numerous barriers to become self-aware — mainly that it creates so-called “acceptable” models of behavior that cannot possibly match each person’s set of ethics and beliefs. But higher education compels us to move past the childhood world of social mimicry and to question what we ourselves hold true. Love and sex should not be exempt from an evolved consideration.

Valentine’s Day has historically been a celebration of love, but I’d like to see it as a day of liberation. Whether we seek emotional or physical intimacy, to get what we want, first we must know what we want. Therefore, while the heart is the organ du jour, it is really the brain that rules the day.

Many of us do not fully reflect on what we what out of our personal lives. We settle for what we have, pine for what we think we should want and oftentimes simply fumble our way through our relationships, hoping trial-and-error will point us in the right direction. Feelings propel us to act, and understanding those feelings can only allow us to make the best and most appropriate decisions for ourselves, society-be-damned. “Getting in touch” with ones emotions may seem detestable to some, but, wandering in the dark, you may hit a love gold mine, but you may just walk off an emotional cliff.

On Valentine’s Day, we are all given the opportunity to vocalize our feelings towards the subject of our interest, to in effect ask for what we desire. Why only on this day are we free to express ourselves? While it may just be the spirit of celebration that encourages us to throw away our inhibitions and profess our feelings of desire, the truly liberated know that each day offers an opportunity to shape one’s personal beliefs regarding love and lust and to pursue them whole-heartedly. As a result, only these people will be able to enjoy all that Valentine’s Day has to offer.

For many, Valentine’s Day is the bane of their existence, the single day of the year they wish they could blot off the calendar, and yet its perpetual reoccurrences invokes the desire to jump off the nearest bridge, or — less dramatically — curl up into the fetal position until the morning of Feb. 15. This tragic response is unwarranted, unless you are entirely and irrevocably without love in your life. What is this value we place on romance? Love itself is an over-generalized concept. Each romance is entirely different from all others, just as romantic love differs from familial or platonic love. It is unfortunate that we find the need to self-deprecate based on our incapacity to perfectly fit into the commercial Valentine’s Day package — especially when even couples find it difficult to live up to the expectations.

This does not mean we must reject Valentine’s Day entirely. I see the day at its best when we release our love unconditionally, when we say it without necessitating a response, expressing our feelings and desires without expectation, simply for the reason that we will never get what we want unless we ask for it.

Taking action requires a certain emotional elasticity. But in the end what do we have to lose by being true to ourselves? Rejection is fleeting, and I think we are all too realistic to believe it’s better to live in denial, in ignorant bliss, than face the difficult truth and give ourselves a new opportunity to pursue real happiness.

Love may not be on your radar. It may be lust or some of life’s many other pursuits. If you could care less and Valentine’s Day holds no meaning for you, than that is a form of liberation in itself. But if you’re professed hatred for chocolate hearts and flowers is based off of a dissatisfaction with your personal life, an inability to give love for fear of the possibility that it may be unrequited, then take them time to know what it is you want and use Valentine’s Day to make it happen.