VALENTINE’S DAY
Love to all on the occasion of Valentine’s day! Let’s celebrate Valentine with true love, the platonic love for all without being a romantic lover of physical seeker.
Let’s celebrate love breaking the boundaries of narrow barriers of religious tradition, selfish nature and business motives of making profits.
Valentine’s day is celebrated as a day of love in the western world on 14th February every year. However, the day has lost its original purpose and become the day of business with a sole focus of physical aspect of love.
Valentine’s day was started when Roman emperor Claudius in the 3rd century banned marriage because he thought married men could not be good soldiers. St Valentine felt it was unfair and breaking rules of the emperor, he arranged marriages secretly.
When the emperor knew about this, he jailed Valentine, who fell in love with the jailer’s daughter when he was in prison. When Valentine was taken to be killed on 14th February, he sent her a love letter signed ‘from your Valentine.’ Since then, this day started to be celebrated as a day of love.
Valentine understood that without marriage, creation would end, and he was ready to sacrifice his life. It has a symbolic meaning. However, with the passing of time, it has become just a business. The day has become a symbol of physical love- materialistic and lustful love.
This day, people show their affection for another person sending gifts, flowers, cards and chocolates with message of love making this day of love is a money-spinning machine as Valentine has become a profitable business worldwide.
According to news report , the average British spent £35 on Valentine’s gift, whereas the USA led the commercialisation of the Valentine’s day where each person spent an average of almost $200 in 2020. This year the average spending will go up again and USA alone is expected to make a record of $ 21.8 billion spending despite the corona virus- social distancing and lockdown. This is a multi-billion business.
Valentine has become a completely materialistic — profit making business. However, the original idea of love is gone forever. The idea of love is not only between a couple- but to all around us.
What do you mean by love? This is a day of love- not physical but platonic- a love to all human being- family, friends and people of your community and country. This is not a love of romantic lovers to each other. This is the love to all humanity. Love, compassion, and devotion should be the message.
In Bhagavad Gita Lord Krishna says: “We are all souls, spiritual beings entitled to rejoice in eternal love with the supremely lovable and loving to all atman (souls).” Like the Valentine’s day, our loving, kind and compassionate nature is polluted by self-centredness, we love to material things more than people around us. This wasted affection falsifies our true nature with our impermanent physical forms and forces us to manipulate people around us to fulfil our selfish desires.
Bhagavad states: “Do everything you have to do, but not with greed, not with ego, not with lust, not with envy but with love, compassion, humility, and devotion”. Greed, ego, lust, and envy are a negative emotion, it leads to arousal of dismay from people.
Love without expectations, love without attachments is pure and divine love, which is the key to our life. Bhagavad Gita talks of supreme love, the higher taste of love, which is the purpose of our life. “I, the atman, dear to the devotees, am attainable by Love and devotion.” When we show that indescribable joyfulness of love without expectation, without selfish nature and without looking at the physical form, then all earthly pleasures wither into oblivion.
My love to you all on this day of love!
