It’s popular nowadays to reject Valentine’s Day as a bane of commercialism or as a vehicle for demanding conformity to societal norms around love. I don’t necessarily disagree with either sentiment, but to imagine that commercialism or pressure to conform are limited to February 14 seems exceedingly naive … dangerous even. (Um, Christmas?!?)
To me, Valentine’s Day is what we make of it. It can be a curse, no doubt. (We’ve all been there, yes?) It can also be a pleasant reminder of what we might do each and every day: love one another.
So, while today may or may not resemble a Judd Apatow movie, we all have someone who loves us and, more importantly, someone who cherishes the love we give.
In that spirit, I offer what is maybe one of the most famous sonnets … nay, one of the most famous love poems of all time, by my boy Willie Shakes.
Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose Worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
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Resembles a Judd Apatow movie? You mean like I haven’t enjoyed one since 2007?
@chris are you dissing drillbit taylor, man? don’t EVEN.
Name's Kirsten. I'm a splitter of hairs, a hillbilly, a rock horns devotee, an ellipses-lovin' fool, and queen of the conceptual jinx. I'm also a geek and the grateful human of littleblackdog. I do this and that and some of the other … up to and including writing this here blog.