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For many people, celebrating the Valentine’s Day is important as it is the time for them to show their love to their another half.  Lovers are looking forward to enjoy a memorable dinner and exchanging gifts with each other.  Many ladies are also looking forward to receiving flowers from their partners.  However, if we look closer to our social circle, we find many people also have no partners to celebrate and they may feel stressed and depressed for not being able to celebrate the Valentine’s Day according to the norm.  Is there only one way to celebrate the Valentine’s Day?

In fact, the origin of the Valentine’s Day is not about celebrating romance and love.  It is actually quite dark and brutal.  Nowadays, this day becomes a big business and is commercialized.  It is also a day for those people who want to showcase their love lives to other people in social media.  If you are also questioning about the meaning of celebrating love in this day, you may want to think out of the box.  As we grow up, we may be influenced by our environment and interactions with others.  As a result, we tend to think and act according to the social norms and feel inferior or abnormal if we have different views or act differently.  In some of their mind, they may criticize themselves as being unlovable or inadequate.  For instance, a man may think, “I am inadequate to find a girlfriend.”  Another woman may think, “I am unlovable because no one loves me in the Valentine’s Day.”

For those who tend to criticize themselves in not acting according to the norms in the Valentine’s Day, it may be helpful for them to see their thoughts as just thoughts.  It is important for them to think that there are many factors contributing to whether one has a partner to celebrate the Valentine’s Day with them, such as health issues, personal preferences, or geographical factors.  In this way, they may not attribute not celebrating this day to their personal flaws. 

Furthermore, for those who had just broken up with their partners, it may be sad for them to witnessing others to celebrate the Valentine’s Day happily.  If they think they should be more detached with their upsetting feelings, they may also criticize themselves for being unable to stay neutral in this day.  Even though we need to learn to see ourselves as a context to experience our thinking and feeling.  That is, to see our thoughts as thoughts only, and to see our feeling as feeling only.  It is not that definite that we should feel nothing in this day if we cannot celebrate with someone as others are doing.  In this sense, we need to embrace our true feelings if we really feel sad for being alone in the Valentine’s Day.  We need to be more self-compassionate to our sadness if we feel a bit lonely and self pity.  With acceptance, we may feel our feelings as it is and embrace these with tenderness. 

Of course, there are more than one way to celebrate the Valentine’s Day.  Apart from celebrating with our loved ones, we can also celebrate on our own.  For those who choose to be alone in this day, ones can enjoy the beauty of solitude.  Ones may enjoy any kind of solitary activities with loving oneself and celebrating our being true to ourselves.  For example, cooking a meal for oneself and enjoying a warm special drink afterwards with reading one’s favourite novel is a good way to enjoy Valentine’s Day by oneself.  For those who choose to be with ones’ good friends in this day, it may also be wonderful to enjoy a fun night out with buddies.  For those who think it is not necessary to celebrate in this day, living in the present moment and doing things as usual in this day is also awesome.

No matter how you celebrate the Valentine’s Day, it is important for you to be true to yourself and think out of the box.  We can act according to our values instead of following the herd.