Valentine’s Day.

If you celebrate today, please don’t make it the consumerist, commercial, greed-infested, expectation-laden “holiday” that marketing teams have created for business profits. Please don’t get angry at your spouse or significant other, for not buying you gifts; or not taking you somewhere fancy. Please don’t taint your open hearts with societal pressures, and attempt to adhere to this commercial holiday’s idea of love for sale. Please don’t express your tenderness in material, superficial and temporary ways. Be good to each other. You are both just spirit energies, encased in biological machines, choosing to surround yourselves with stuff; rather than allowing your souls to soar together. Actions speak louder than words; and the memories from incredible experiences will last longer than tangible things…

If you truly want to celebrate your love today, please make it a time to connect your souls into an everlasting bond of understanding, nurturing, appreciation, passion and respect. Make it a time to deeply gaze into the eyes of your partner, and thank the universe for their existence with every fiber of your own being. Connect with them beyond the physical and trivial. Worship them, adore and cherish their devotion to you, and you will surely honor your relationship. Diamonds, expensive dinners, heart-shaped chocolates and hot sex will never capture the essence of love, so please don’t make today about those things. Make it about allowing your partner into the sincerest corners of your heart. Let them see your soul, and hear your thoughts; let them sense your emotions and have them hold you like they’ll never let you go. Remove the masks of cultural conditioning. Take your makeup off, shed your special clothes, and enjoy your true selves: uninhibited, unrestrained by social constructs of beauty, and express yourselves as you really are. Discover one another, and let yourselves be loved… Unconditionally. Regress into the esoteric, astrological roots of this day, and immerse yourselves in the celestial energy that will intertwine your souls, minds, hearts and bodies. That’s when hot sex becomes the amazing, incredible, mind-blowing and completely satisfying experience of making love. That’s when you entirely know your partner, and can share the ecstasy of being one.

I am happy for your happiness! I wish you nothing but the sweetest gasps between your kisses. Nothing but the flutter of your chests, as they fill with such emotion that it overwhelms your hearts. I wish you such intensity in closeness, that your bodies become extensions of your innermost desires. I wish your fingertips to linger, and adorn your loved one’s barest skin, as he or she breathes: “I love you” on your cheek. I wish sincerity upon your lips, affection in your touch, and freedom in your souls’ delights, as you embrace true love within each others’ arms. I hope you see each others’ flawless sensuality, and adore the smallest quirks that make you so uniquely beautiful. Bask in the aura of your love’s perfection, and grasp each moment, as if it were your last. I hope you feel this love, like you have never felt before, and I hope it lasts forever.

If you’re single, do not allow a bogus Hallmark holiday to make you feel lonely, segregated and resentful. Today should not be about that. Please don’t post jokes online about being alone, and thus having to consume copious amounts of alcohol to feel better about yourself. Please don’t be bitter and passive-aggressive towards your current situation, and do not devalue or disrespect others’ successful relationships. I was so hurt to see the dozens of lovely, happy, single people, become so mean and self-defeating today. Do you think you’re not loved? Do you think having a boyfriend or girlfriend will make you feel appreciated, beautiful and complete today? I don’t think so. I think you’re refusing to recognize that your negative attitude towards today, is preventing you from enjoying it as a human being, capable of many types of love. You are so fixated on the commercial consumerism of this holiday, that you are letting its genuine loveliness slip right through your fingers, as you type a nasty anti-Valentine’s Day post. Your attempts at sarcastic facetiousness are simply self-defense mechanisms, to shield you from the boundless love and beauty that you could receive today. Not from a one particular significant other, but from the world around you.

Love takes many forms, and you are not alone… Once you recognize this, you will no longer feed into the abomination of Valentine’s Day in this culture. The “OMG I’m single and I am totally alone! I need a boyfriend/girlfriend to be a whole person!” mentality, which you perpetuate through your negative, spiteful views on love and relationships. You completely undermine the independent, liberating, intuitive and self-discovering wholeness of being single. It’s just silly! Don’t get me wrong, I understand your depression, because I also detest what love and relationships have been reduced to nowadays… They’re a joke (for the most part). A passing cliché, just like the marketable idea of Valentine’s Day… And that’s exactly why I’m single.

Not because I’m flawed, insufficient, ugly, damaged, or a dysfunctional member of society; but because I’m traveling down my own unbeaten paths. I am exploring my soul, learning my life’s lessons and embracing true love for myself, without holding grudges and resentments towards my condition. I am alone, because I need to be, in order to become a whole person again. I am alone, but I am not lonely, because I have learned to appreciate, trust and respect myself enough to know that me, myself and I, will suffice. I am good enough for me. I am perfect, just the way I am. I am beautiful, with all my faults, inside and out. I am loved by so many, in a million different ways! And I am so thankful to all the forces of the universe, which have blessed me with such adoration. I am grateful for past loves, current loves, and loves I am yet to feel. I appreciate all this, because I do not require someone else to make me feel complete. This is why I refuse to participate in the ruthless self-shaming that single people spread online. I will not feel like I’m missing out on anything, due to being single on Valentine’s Day. I am too mesmerized by the wonderful vibes around me today. I know you can feel them too.

That being said, be thankful for what you have, and stop focusing on what you lack. There is love all around you, everywhere, always. Identify it, appreciate it, reciprocate it if you wish, and be eternally thankful to the purity of that emotion’s sources. Please stop envying those, who have found a soul-mate, and stop seeing singledom as some crippling disease. You are a divine creation! The fact that you spent today without a lover, should only mean that your soul has not yet recognized divinity within another. Bring a flush back into your cheeks, and let them dimple into a smile. Enjoy your life! Be happy! Learn, grow, and savor your independence, make no compromise or sacrifice! Love yourself completely, and when you’re ready, your soul-mate will appear to take you the rest of the way. So, please, refrain from spreading messages of negativity, bitterness, and self-hatred today. Please, find it within yourself to share in the joy of millions of happy couples this evening. I can literally feel their energy all around me, and it is intoxicating… Love is in the air!

Therefore, I will ask you, fellow unattached people, to put the vodka bottles down, discard the chocolate, wipe your tears of self-imposed loneliness, and go outside… Just step out and breathe. Plant your feet into the snow, until you feel your spine connect to this beautiful earth. Stretch out your fingers, close your eyes, and inhale deeply. Embrace the world, and allow its power to send tingles through your skin. Hug the energy of so many joyful lovers, and let their blissful serenity warm your soul. Let the full moon kiss your eyes, feel the crisp breeze caress your cheeks, hear your heartbeat in the stillness of your mind, and know that you are loved. You are loved by someone, somewhere. Reach out, and love them back.

I hope that you can someday understand what those, who love you, see within you. I wish for your most beautiful dreams to materialize, and for your heart to fly alongside the moon! I wish for nothing but the fulfillment of your life’s desires. I wish for nothing but your happiness. I hope that you can wipe the slate clean, and start tomorrow on a brighter, kinder note, towards the celebration of mankind’s most precious emotion. I’ll be here to help you through. Even if you cannot yet love yourself for the perfect creature that you are, I will love you. Because I know you’re incredible, irreplaceable, magnificent, beautiful, capable, intelligent and profoundly, relentlessly you. And I love you. You are not alone. Ever. You are loved. Always. So, smile — love is in the air… And it’s not even Valentine’s Day anymore 🙂