Valentine’s Day according to Maclynn: S.W.A.K.

Men and women get caught in the expectation of Valentine’s Day and even with best efforts, they can get it horribly wrong. Guys, how well do you know your Lady? Do you feel pressured by commercialism to deliver? Is a giant arrangement of Interflora flowers just the trick? Is the jewellery you know she loves, just what she needs? Is she dieting and you present her with a two layer box of the finest chocolates? Do you present these gifts like a cat depositing a bird on the kitchen floor, or is it worth stopping and thinking for a moment? Is the value of our love in the gift or in the sentiment behind it? Ladies, do you have an expectation on Valentine’s Day that validates your man’s worth, or perhaps you have no expectation at all? The marketing of this annual celebration places everyone under pressure that you can either engage with or ignore.

When you think about it, Valentine’s Day is a tradition that has been selected to demonstrate and speak of your love because everyone else is too. It’s expected, so if you do or say nothing at all, are you guilty as charged? When it all boils down, really what any human being wants is to be loved and to know they are loved, ALL the time and not just because it’s the 14th of February. The size and value of a gift can be invalidated by the way in which it is given. Do we compare or keep an account? Does the gift really say “I love you”? What we really want to read or hear are genuine words of love that are real and sincere. The beauty is not in the perfect composition or delivery, but in the heartfelt realness of what we say.

During WW2 when people had very little money and commercialism was almost non-existent, there was no internet, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or shopping malls. It was a world where the one you loved could be here one minute and gone the next, and the immediacy of communication was as impossible as the circumstances. A note, a card, or a photo with the words of complete truth from the heart became a treasure you could cling to. On the darkest day reading those words or looking at that picture was a reminder of your true love. If you want to know how to really tell someone you love them, write a letter, hide love notes for him/her to find, or better still, take their hands, look them in the eye and tell them, from the heart, just how incredible they are and what they mean to you.