I have a confession to make.
I love Valentine's Day. I love it. It is my favorite holiday of the year, surpassed only by Patriot's Day (better known as Marathon Monday), and that's only if I'm gonna be in Boston AND I'll get to pass out Gatorade.
I have been an unabashed lover of Valentine's Day for as long as I can remember--back since the days of doily hearts and foil stickers and tissue-paper covered shoeboxes filled with your classmates' Kermit the Frog Valentines Cards. As I've gotten older--and my Valentines cards have gotten a little more sophisticated--my love for the holiday has only grown.
I recognize that this puts me in a very small minority. People HATE Valentine's Day. Couples stress out about the pressure of making it romantic and complain about how it creates artificial expectations. Singles use it as an opportunity to binge eat, dress like a slob, drink too much and behave like bitter, mopey, angry people. Valentine's Day--it seems--brings out the curmudgeon in just about everyone.
I will admit, this year I almost caved. Being the sole champion of a holiday nearly everyone hates is discouraging. And for one week, I seriously considered putting down the gauntlet, putting on the Ani DiFranco and throwing myself a one-woman pity party while drowning my single woman sorrows in a tub of Rocky Road.
Here's the thing, though. I will not allow the horrible people writing Halmark cards and producing women's magazines to ruin my Valentine's Day. Just because they proclaim that Valentine's Day is all about hearts and flowers and romance and finding "the one" does not actually make it so. There IS a difference between how something is framed and what it actually can be.
My point is that there is a grain of goodness (I would even say greatness) to Valentine's Day. You just have to tap into it. That's true of a lot of things. Take Thanksgiving. I don't happen to think that celebrating genocide and manifest destiny makes for a very good holiday, but I'll take that whole bit about thinking about what I should be grateful for. It's the same with Valentine's Day.
I have wonderful friends. I have a great family. I love them all very much. So as Valentine's Day rolls around, you'd better believe I'll be celebrating that love--and I'll be letting them know. Don't sell love short just because it doesn't come wrapped in a box of chocolates or a bouquet of roses or an expensive candlelight dinner with your soul mate. Love is still love--it always will be--and we should honor and cherish it in all its forms.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
A million tiny pieces
The state of California executed Clarence Ray Allen at midnight last night. At midnight--the cusp between the anniversary of Martin Luther King's birthday and Allen's own 76th birthday--the state of California made an irreversible decision about the value of his life, about the possibility of redemption, about the righteousness of vengeance.
Last night, at the vigil marking his execution, I witnessed and mourned the death of one more tiny piece of our country's collective humanity. Humanity: the shapeless, intangible thing that distinguishes us from animals. Our soul, our spirit, our distinct light. I have always thought of humanity as essentially our ability to relate to one another, to empathize, to see ourselves in others and others in ourselves.
I had assumed that our humanity was a given. A definite, permanent state. Now I am not so sure. Can it be lost? Can it erode? Can it be chipped away by the everyday wear and tear of moral decisions? Perhaps humanity is a more fragile state than I had thought. How many tiny pieces of humanity can we lose before we've lost its basic essence? Before all we're left with are pieces that add up to nothing?
People will argue that Clarence Ray Allen was a murderer. They will argue that he put no value on the lives he took. They will argue that he long ago lost his humanity. They will use this as a justification for why he should have been executed. It seems to me, though, that the discussion should not really be about him. It is about the rest of us, and how many more pieces of our humanity we are willing to sacrifice in the name of "justice" or "moral authority" or "vengeance" or whatever other euphemism we choose to use. I just pray that we never lose too many.
Last night, at the vigil marking his execution, I witnessed and mourned the death of one more tiny piece of our country's collective humanity. Humanity: the shapeless, intangible thing that distinguishes us from animals. Our soul, our spirit, our distinct light. I have always thought of humanity as essentially our ability to relate to one another, to empathize, to see ourselves in others and others in ourselves.
I had assumed that our humanity was a given. A definite, permanent state. Now I am not so sure. Can it be lost? Can it erode? Can it be chipped away by the everyday wear and tear of moral decisions? Perhaps humanity is a more fragile state than I had thought. How many tiny pieces of humanity can we lose before we've lost its basic essence? Before all we're left with are pieces that add up to nothing?
People will argue that Clarence Ray Allen was a murderer. They will argue that he put no value on the lives he took. They will argue that he long ago lost his humanity. They will use this as a justification for why he should have been executed. It seems to me, though, that the discussion should not really be about him. It is about the rest of us, and how many more pieces of our humanity we are willing to sacrifice in the name of "justice" or "moral authority" or "vengeance" or whatever other euphemism we choose to use. I just pray that we never lose too many.
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Blue
Do you remember how everything always seemed. . . more when you were a kid? Bigger, longer or just better? Maybe it was just an issue of scale--we were small and the world was big. I prefer to think it was an issue of wonder--we were in awe and the world was amazing. And somewhere over the years, we lost that sense of awe. The world shrunk, and things weren't quite as amazing.
One of my earliest memories is of being convinced that the sky in Colorado was bluer than anywhere else I'd ever been, bluer than anywhere else in the world. It was the kind of blue that was more than just a color; it was a blue that soaked into your soul and shook you alive. The sky everywhere else seemed dim and drab and lifeless in comparison.
For years, as I've moved around the country, I have romanticized that sky. But everytime I go home, I prepare myself for that inevitable shock of discovering that this too--like everything else from my childhood--is not as grand as I remember.
Here's the funny thing, though: I've never been disappointed. I walk off a plane, and the Colorado sky is still the color of my memories, of my daydreams. If anything it's brighter and bolder, making my memories look like pale pastel watercolor versions of a technicolor reality.
I don't ever know quite what to make of this fact. For now I accept it as a gift, perhaps a little cautiously, fearing that someday it will get taken away. It's a gift of more than just a sky color, however: it is a little piece of my childish wonder, reminding me that the world is, in fact, as amazing as I once thought.
One of my earliest memories is of being convinced that the sky in Colorado was bluer than anywhere else I'd ever been, bluer than anywhere else in the world. It was the kind of blue that was more than just a color; it was a blue that soaked into your soul and shook you alive. The sky everywhere else seemed dim and drab and lifeless in comparison.
For years, as I've moved around the country, I have romanticized that sky. But everytime I go home, I prepare myself for that inevitable shock of discovering that this too--like everything else from my childhood--is not as grand as I remember.
Here's the funny thing, though: I've never been disappointed. I walk off a plane, and the Colorado sky is still the color of my memories, of my daydreams. If anything it's brighter and bolder, making my memories look like pale pastel watercolor versions of a technicolor reality.
I don't ever know quite what to make of this fact. For now I accept it as a gift, perhaps a little cautiously, fearing that someday it will get taken away. It's a gift of more than just a sky color, however: it is a little piece of my childish wonder, reminding me that the world is, in fact, as amazing as I once thought.
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