‘The Month of Love.’

Here we are again, in this never-ending cycle around the Sun, in this one fraction of time that the world, for some reason, calls the ‘Month of Love’.

Walls of stores will suddenly turn pink, ceilings will be afloat with hearts or cardboard Cupids, songs of love are in the air, all of your food will suddenly have names that have got nothing to do with the food itself but everything to do with love, people all around are saving up to get their significant other something memorable, pink, red and white confetti will be found in every nook and cranny you can find, jewellery sales will go up because people suddenly want to propose to their partners with nice bling or just gift them jewellery for the heck of it.

To add to this, teddy bears, well, stuffed animals in general, will go on sale, chocolates are suddenly going to be overpriced, ice cream tubs are going to be super-sized, cafes will suddenly add too much red or pink food colouring to everything, the commercials on TV will start romanticizing anything and everything, Spotify will make you custom playlists of love songs based on your preference, hearts, Cupids and other motifs of love will suddenly stare you in the face, no matter where you look, and for some reason, everyone is going to be either too heady in love or too sad about not having a certain someone for this season.

Not just that! TV channels will now show Rom-Coms back-to-back, Netflix will probably have a whole new collection of them too. Your favourite Instagram pages will join in on the fun too! Everyone will suddenly start positing long, sappy paragraphs about their significant other, everyone will somehow turn into a poet or writer and channel either their misery or absolute joy. So, nothing new there, am I right? You’ll start seeing targeted ads that will either make you feel bad about not having someone for the season or make you feel like you want to smother them with gifts.

There will be people tweeting about how this is all a pile of rubbish, and then there will be people who tweet about how happy they are. In short, there is no dearth to the kind of things and antics we get to witness in February, and the month has only just started! I wonder what else there is to come. You love it, you hate it, you’re stuck with it and you just have to put up with it.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a hopeless romantic, and I love all things love. But when it comes to celebrating a ‘Month of Love’ and widely commercializing it just for the sake of it, I feel like we might have gone a tad too far. I’m not complaining, though. I get to buy chocolates in bulk at discounted prices at the end of all this. Just kidding, also maybe not! But I am not particularly thrilled at the idea of having to write about love for a month just to keep my stats up and running (and also because I don’t want to feel the crippling FOMO).

In July, I wrote for an entire month about all kinds of love, not just romantic. But this month, I am going to write about romantic love. To be fair, it doesn’t really seem like a task to me because I am in love and even if I wasn’t, I would be in love with the idea of love, being the kind of person I am, so I’m pretty sure if find a way to write about it nevertheless. But this isn’t about that at all. It’s about the fact that love is such a vast subject to write on. I could go on forever and not run out of things to say about love because it’s almost as infinite as the Universe itself!

It’s crazy how deep the word ‘love’ is, but we have reduced it to hearts and crappy movies that do nothing but push all kinds of toxicity that should probably be a million miles away from where love actually is. I’ve never understood why we need a month to celebrate love. It’s something that should be celebrated every single day! Maybe it’s cute to have a ‘Month of Love’ in some extremely saccharine way. But do you really think that gifts and expensive dates are what love has reduced to? Because if you do, I don’t know what to tell you.

Love is a commitment. It’s fleeting, it may be seasonal, it may end in tears and heartbreak, or it may end in a happily ever after kind of a fairytale. There is no telling. But that should be no reason for any of us to think that February is the most romantic month of the year because that’s just plain stupid. Why do you think that is? Is it the weather that makes people want to cuddle under blankets? Is it the actual love between two people? Or is it the fact that ever since you can remember, you’ve only ever known that February is associated with flowers, gifts, chocolates, rings and whatnot?

It’s not the month that is romantic, it’s what we were made to think about the month itself. As far as I know, love can exist outside of February and still blossom and thrive. So am I going to fall into the shameless hands of capitalism and write about love for this entire month? Yes. But do I think love should be restricted to just a month? Absolutely not!

I know that some of you are going to feel a little left out because you don’t have someone to share this with, or because the person you want to share this with is not here at the moment. But love is love, you know? It’s not going to die out if you don’t have plans for the upcoming Valentine’s Day! Here’s a better idea, be your own Valentine this year and show yourself lots of love, even if it’s just for a month. You never know how that could turn things around for you!

Here’s looking forward to a ‘Month of Love’ or whatever! Don’t let the pink confetti get to you too much!

Cheerio! Xx

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Yours truly,
The Shubhster.

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Featured Image by Jesse Goll on Unsplash