Here it is, sitting on our doorstep again…the holiday that tends to bring about the most extreme emotions, expectations, and often times, disappointments.
I’m going to be honest for a second and just say that usually February fourteenth is a less than ideal day for me. It has strayed far from the shiny glowing memories I had as a kid putting those perfectly chosen cards into my friend’s mailboxes on their desks. And it has strayed far from the anticipation of candy from my mom to make me feel like I was the best kid in the world.
For some people today is the greatest day of the year because their somebody is detail oriented and puts all type-a’s to shame with how “on it” they are (get it girl!).
Unfortunately this happy hearted day has left many of us lacking, even those of us with wonderful people in our lives. We couldn’t help it, we hoped for something more. Many of us hoped for a somebody to share it with, or some of us hoped our somebody would pull through and do something really spectacular and special to remind us (and tell the rest of the world) how great and special we are to them. Somewhere in the midst of these longings, one—or all—of these high hopes can easily come crashing down.
We are those same little girls who were waiting for just a little affirmation in our mailboxes. Waiting to be special to someone, even if it was just our mom.
As ladies we still dream and romanticize about those little fairytale moments. Those sweep-me-off-my-feet gestures. While the forms may be different than they used to be (an invitation to dinner, a thoughtful text or phone call, flowers, coffee and a donut) our hearts are the same. Just a little bit of “sweep me off my feet,” just a tiny bit of those “butterflies” in our stomachs again. We are those same little girls who were waiting for just a little affirmation in our mailboxes. Waiting to be special to someone, even if it was just our mom.
Valentine’s Day pokes at a lot of the insecurities and loneliness in our lives, even if we do have a fantastic somebody who cares about us. We often hear from society, or even from the people in our lives, that we matter most when we matter to someone else—and typically that someone else is supposed to be of romantic origin. So we dream up all these wonderful anecdotes about how great life will be when we have our somebody to read our mind and re-create all the scenes in the notebook for us. Finally, everything will have fallen into place.
While I’m not trying to knock on Valentine’s Day, lend me your ear for a second as I dream up a little bit of a different take on this day of love proclaiming.
What if today, instead of waiting to be swept off our feet, we decided to look to the people around us? What if we looked to our other somebodies? What if we looked to our person, our people, our sisters—the ones who listen to us babble when we’re feeling misunderstood, the ones who are still willing to be seen in public with us when we haven’t washed our hair in way too many days, the ones who send us snapchats of their triple chins, and those somebodies who have chosen to see the best in us even when we can’t—what if we turned today into a day that honored all the people in our lives who have loved us well, and reminded us that we are somebody.
What if instead of turning today into celebration of how much somebody loves us, we took the day to love and celebrate others? I know that each of us have people in our lives who have stuck with us when we didn’t even like us. People who have put up with our crazy mood swings, pms, changing opinions, and given us those hard, but cherished, words of advice that allowed us to see the world just a little bit differently.
So, what if today, we honored all of our somebodies for this fourteen?
What if we wrote them notes about how much their consistency meant in our lives? What if we reminded them how much we notice and cherish them even though our proximities may have changed? What if we took a second to acknowledge that we couldn’t have done **____** without them? What if we told the world just how much we loved them?
Call me naive, but I believe fourteen could be a beautiful day of unexpected fullness.
This fourteenth, I am really excited to dream a little differently, and to see to it that those wonderful, persistent, patient, persevering souls in my world understand just how much they truly are my somebodies.
Photos by Whitney Darling, Karen Hernandez, and Nikole Sparks