Our Views: Valentine’s Day honors love

Even on Valentine’s Day, a holiday intended to be one of the brightest days on the calendar, one can open up the daily newspaper and find plenty of obituary notices waiting inside. Reading them, we’re always struck by this simple reality — that when a life is summarized, it’s the people one has loved who count as the principal achievements in any person’s biography. Professional accomplishments have their place, as well as the diplomas one has gathered, the clubs one has joined. But it’s the survivors who figure most prominently in the obituary pages — the lives touched because another life connected with them, however briefly.

These are the connections we honor and celebrate on Valentine’s Day. It’s a day to honor love in all its forms — romantic love, to be sure, but also, the love among parents and children and siblings, as well as cherished friends.

We wish everyone a Happy Valentine’s Day — and a year filled with the affection of loved ones.

Comments

1) Comment by prbeav - 15/02/2013

Thank you, editors. I very much like "It’s a day to honor love in all its forms.">>>>Love is worthy of life-long study. I find "appreciation" a useful substitute for "love" in political discussions; it gives the other party the opportunity to respond "You mean love: don't you?">>>>>Everyone could benefit from forming an opinion of Agathon's speech about the character of Eros (love). See online at http://archive.org/stream/PlatosSymposium/Plato-Symposiumbenardete_djvu.txt click down fifteen pages and find "for not upon earth does he walk" and continue to the end of Agathon's speech.

2) Comment by Bouncer - 14/02/2013

Valentine's Day is a silly, manufactured, overly-sentimentalized non-holiday (who gets that day off work?) which actually benefits only card companies, candy stores, and flower shops.

3) Comment by [e-mail] - 14/02/2013

One might love a lot of others who don't reciprocate that love; balance whom one has loved by those who have loved that one.