I once worked in a card store.
This fact in and of itself is nothing extraordinary, except for the fact that in the course of my employment there, I was made privy to a most peculiar sort of activity every time Feb. 14 rolled around on the calendar.
It was on this day, Valentine’s Day of course, that an almost clarion call boomed across the earth, and men of all kinds scurried hurriedly into the store to plop down their crisp, newly ATM-dispensed $20 bills in exchange for some empty token of love to give to their significant other.
On these days, when I wasn’t ringing up obscene, clichéd and obnoxious greeting cards mass-produced by a bunch of hacks somewhere in the Midwest United States, I spent my time ruminating on what Valentine’s Day has become in our society.
Far from its origins in early Christian Rome, when, legend has it, the real St. Valentine was martyred for having views on marriage which were different to Emperor Claudius II, our modern Valentine’s Day is nothing more than a symptom of our diseased “culture,” a way of life polluted by fast food, boy bands and cheap sentimentalism, a society fast losing any vestige of decency it might have once possessed.
Am I the only one who thinks it’s a depressingly sad state of affairs when our feelings, our closest contacts with the ones we love, are mass-produced?
These giant card conglomerates are nothing more than modern day Cyrano de Bergeracs, giving us empty vehicles of emotions to use as a means to an end. Just what have we become as a society when even our most intimate correspondences are store-bought?
I’ll tell you what we have become. We have become drones, mindlessly adhering to the norm for reasons of sex, money, or whatever else satisfies our empty corporal needs until the next holiday rolls around the calendar.
We have become empty vessels, soulless slugs whose brains have been so reduced to mindless drudgery that we are no longer capable of even conveying raw emotions to one another. In short, we have become inhuman corporate sycophants, obsessed with everything but actual substance.
So, as we celebrate this Valentine’s Day this year, maybe a bit of introspection is warranted.
Maybe we should all, in the wake of such drama and near tragedy on Tuesday, just take a step back from our sheltered existences and be honest with ourselves and our loved ones.
Everyone always says “It’s the thought that counts” when holidays roll around. This is obviously not the case. In this day and age, we buy and sell our thoughts and expressions at the corner store.
But this year on Valentine’s Day, maybe we can all learn a lesson from one another and just give a simple message of love and gratitude to our loved ones. I think St. Valentine himself would approve.
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