Forget About Valentine's Day! Love Yourself First!

The month of February is finally here and everywhere the shimmering red roses are emerging like fierce reminders

The Moroccan pink rose is my favorite flower. This is a sumptuous, fragile, and majestic flower. This rose is so different than the overexposed sanguine red rose that everybody knows perfectly, the flower wrongly associated with love. As if love should strictly have just one color... The bright color of red roses has been so used and constantly abused especially on Valentine's Day that it has lost all of its pure illumination. This passionate and showy red color is unfortunately becoming meaningless and frivolous in an uncaring world of lookalikes. This red rose propaganda is completely ruining the delicate flower's original essence due to so many fake societal manipulations.

The beautiful Dades Valley in Morocco, known as the Valley of the Roses is the kingdom of delicate pink roses. The beautiful landscape reflects an amazing pink masterpiece filled with wonderful scents of rose aroma freely floating in the air. This is truly heaven on earth for roses and for anyone who is on the quest for spectacular inspiration. Valentine's day is considered hell on earth for all of the innocent red roses lined up to be bought without love or delicacy in the stores.

Everywhere we go, we witness how the beautiful and graceful red color is brutalized over and over. From the giant red teddy bear looking for phony hugs, the tasteless chocolate boxes, the fake plastic flowers, or the beautiful dozen of fresh red roses packed like unlucky sacks of potatoes waiting for the Thanksgiving feast. The beautiful red color is all over the place and constantly reminds us to buy in order to love or to love in order to buy, in whichever order you would prefer. Regardless, many would think something seems wrong. Many would believe that there is something wrong with my perspective and that maybe I am one of the so many lonely souls who simply dislike Valentine’s Day. The naked truth is that I am not a hater; I am just a true believer in love. I am a strong believer of true love, the kind of love that is beyond any reasonable interpretation.

So what's wrong with me?

I guess a lot of things... just like everybody else, but regarding Valentine's Day, there is something that deeply bothers me. There is something profoundly untrue about it. There is something terribly deceptive in the air, and this is surely not love. Please do not get me wrong; it is fully your right to celebrate and strongly support Valentine's Day if you wish to do so. However, I believe that there are some truths that need to be told without shame or hurt feelings.

Most of us wrongly welcome Valentine's Day as a deep affirmation of true love. Most of us associate love with this grossly over-commercialized practice of buying Valentine's gifts. Most of us act like mechanical clones who avidly follow the billions of advices of the so-called “love experts”. These are advices for robots on what to buy for Valentine's Day, what to wear, what to consume, how to propose on Valentine's Day, how to behave on Valentine's night, and how to deal with Valentine's Day if you are single.

Well, I simply believe that there is something completely unnatural about all this hype. As a certain lousy politician would say, “What is going on?” There is some hint of societal hypocrisy that does not deserve to be called love. We voluntarily hide so many untold secrets in others and ourselves, and we blindly follow this sappy societal trend. The sad but honest reality is that nobody is perfect because we all are human beings with weaknesses. This is why some of us should acknowledge Valentine's Day as being a big scam on others and ourselves.

Indeed, this is a huge fraud that unfortunately affects the mind of the youngest ones at school as well. Good luck in trying to explain to Molly why John gave a Valentine's Card to Becky and not to her. Don't get me started on how this carnival of fake affection affects emotionally children. Children who are already brainwashed while associating the feelings of love with material gifts do not benefit from this show of fake affections.

Everybody deserves the attentions of love all year round, not just on Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day does not really fit into our modern society where we all know that relationships have this dark complexity. There is no perfect relationship, because we all reflect the image of our relationship. We are the ones who fully decide the faith of our relationship. Let’s think about this worried husband/wife who needs to give special attention to his/her spouse and maybe to a hidden other half on Valentine’s Day. Let's think about the gift chosen for the loved one; let's think about that mechanical gesture with neither emotional strains nor a sense of love. Sounds familiar, right? This does not sound like true love as it was originally intended. This is more like dancing with the devil. There is no purity in dissimulation, manipulation and secrecy. There is no truth in continually misleading ourselves. This is one of the hidden faces of our society that obviously impacts the Valentine's Day of so many human beings, and much more than we would like to acknowledge it.

More importantly, let's clearly state that... 

Love Does Not Need A Reminder 

Love does not need Valentine's Day to be revived. Love is not buyable; it just happens. Love suddenly erupts in your life with no warning. Love cannot be sold; love is bigger than ourselves. Love is a pure and natural force. Love is uncontrollable and transports us to unknown dimensions. Love is not negotiable, controllable or able to be manipulated. Love is always in a rush; it cannot wait to consume itself. We cannot force someone to love us, nor we can stop them from loving us as well. Love is a complete mystery; love is intrinsically empathic and compassionate. Love is wild by essence; it cannot be restrained. Love does not come with a manual; love has no rules. Love graciously celebrates the preeminence of each soul. Love profoundly interconnects souls in an incomprehensible and exquisite way. Love cannot be used as reward or punishment. Love is authentic. Love is unique. Love has this beauty that everybody is looking for. Truly being in love is the most thought and time-consuming life experience. Even though sometimes the greatest and most heartbreaking act of love is letting the person you love deeply go. Nevertheless, everybody wants to be deeply loved. Everybody should be deeply loved. Many of us just want to be loved. Many of us completely forget that love starts within ourselves. In fact, love begins with the ability to face our fears, doubts and unique truths.   

Love is the concealed grace within ourselves

To tell the truth, we cannot expect someone else to love us if we do not love ourselves. Self-love is indeed the first step to more fulfilling relationships. We cannot expect others to make us feel confident if we are deeply insecure. We need to fight for who we truly are. We need to be committed to who we are. We need to constantly advocate our values and principles in life. We have to learn how to love ourselves before being able to love others. Indeed, self-love is about accepting who we really are, and is not to be confused with narcissism, which is based on false self-vision and fantasy. Self-love is knowing who we dream to become by taking into consideration the reality and authenticity of our own lives. Self-love is also about setting boundaries for ourselves and others. Self-love is the essence of love, the precious key to self-esteem, self worth, and self-confidence. We have to be in love with ourselves before being able to care for and serve other human beings. By truly accepting our "self", we are more willing to accept all other human beings. We have to love ourselves through our errors, imperfections, and any regrets that we may have. We have to believe in who we are endlessly. Once we have fully discovered how to truly love ourselves, someone else will too.

Forget about Valentine's Day and forever love yourself to be able to feel as heavenly as these Moroccan pink roses from the beautiful Valley of the Roses.

KHM. 

We always have to remember that we are unique and that our uniqueness is worth fighting for.

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