Pick Me, Choose Me, Love Me
By TMP 43rd Editorial Board
Year after year, without fail, Valentine’s Day incites one of our era’s more frustrating lifestyle discourses. One side of this dialogue is populated by salty singletons cloaked in critical rhetoric, and the other by people with the most disturbingly media-trained romantic relationships imaginable. Every time, the conflict centers on the question of how society should regard “cuffed” people as a class. Are they oppressive symbols of dependence? Are they ideal role models? Are they, as the incel camp would have it, über-lucky deities walking among us?
The Milton Paper, however, takes issue with this discourse because it reduces love to only its romantic iteration, ignoring the manifold possible expressions of love for the world and human beings. Romantic connection is a wonderful thing when achieved, but treating its presence or absence as some sort of supreme reward or punishment cheapens the love that surrounds us, even when we close our eyes to it.
With Valentine’s Day tomorrow, a question arises: why do we emphasize romantic relationships as the ultimate? Ancient Greek boasts six different words for love, each encapsulating unique and nuanced meanings: agápē for affection, respect, and reverence—the way we love HT and Rhys; érōs for sexual passion—if you know, you know; philía for friendship and fraternity; storgē for family love; philautía for often-problematic self-love; xenía for hospitality, what xenophobes fear. In English, these sentiments collapse into one term: “love.” Valentine’s Day ought not solely center around romantic love at the expense of the spectrum of intimate human connection.
Although platonic relationships constitute arguably the most important bonds with which high school presents us—after all, our best friends from this period will forever know us as we responded to the transformation of adolescence—we would also urge a renewed interest in a generalized attitude of love that seems to have fallen by the wayside. Insofar as proximity breeds philía, countless souls among the nameless strangers we encounter daily could, under different circumstances, love us and be loved by us. We do not mean to say that you must confess your darkest secrets to strangers you encounter on the Red Line, but, in times of hurt, they might become your source of xenía; we view a broad love for humanity as a small gesture of preemptive thanks. On that note, as student journalists, we count certain interviews among our most profound conversations, enabled by a framing that forces vulnerability between two people who may be strangers.
Romantic love is only one expression of the human capacity for connection. If you pay attention, you will find so many more such expressions, from late-night phone calls with friends to shared laughter after long days to the simple comfort of being understood. While these moments might not arrive in bouquets or grand declarations, they represent a consistent, reliable love not confined to one form.
Modern Valentine’s Day, despite its commercialization, endows its celebrants with the freedom of a holiday based around a sentiment (love, all of it) rather than a specific role, so celebrations of love on February 14 can prove profound. However, in expressing our love consistently, we free ourselves from the trap of consumerism. Perhaps cooking dinner together would feel warmer than competing for a one-time reservation, and taking care of a plant would build memories that last longer than an expensive bouquet of roses. A one-time extravagance could never truly replace the daily, often unglamorous, acts of love, although it can symbolize them meaningfully.
Perhaps we should take February 14 as an opportunity to resist the pressure to overconsume and instead view it as a reminder to deepen the relationships that already exist around us. The world we inhabit is sorely lacking in love, compassion, and kindness. This Valentine’s Day, consider taking time to acknowledge the people you love and appreciate beyond the romantic: write letters of gratitude to your teachers, host a dinner with friends, spend quality time with family, volunteer in your community, and take time to appreciate yourself.