THROUGH UNTRUE

Fr. Rolando V. De La Rosa OP Valentine's Day is two days from now. For sure, traffic will be horrible on all streets leading to Dangwa Flower Market. Many people consider flowers as one of the most romantic symbols of love. But flowers easily droop, fade, and wilt, so the love that they symbolize must also be short-lived and inconstant — just like our good intentions and feelings. In one of his homilies, Pope Francis said, “Experience shows that feelings are fickle. Relationships that are merely based on feelings are not guaranteed to last.” Valentine’s Day is supposed to celebrate love. But commercialism has succeeded in turning love into a commodity or an economic transaction. Many of us buy and send flowers, chocolate, teddy bears, colorful heart-shaped balloons, and Valentine cards, hoping to receive something in return. The rich would even gift their beloved with expensive jewelry, a sumptuous dinner in a classy hotel, or an escapade to an expensive resort. But what if you don’t receive anything on Valentine’s Day? Miley Cyrus has a piece of advice in her song “Flowers.” She wildly sings and dances away frustration as she croons:

“I started to cry but then remembered

I can buy myself flowers...

I can take myself dancing

And I can hold my own hand.

Yeah, I can love me better than you can.”

Jilted lovers and those who feel unloved during Valentine’s Day will surely applaud Miley’s very practical message. Buy a beautiful bouquet and give this to yourself. Show the person who scorned or rejected you that you can love yourself better than he or she can. Miley’s song echoes Whitney Houston’s anthem: “Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.” When you love yourself, you can face rejection calmly and graciously. So, on Valentine’s Day, send flowers to yourself. If you want to make other people feel special, why not do the same to yourself? You deserve it. But a little caution: Self-love can turn into malignant narcissism, which makes you too preoccupied with calling attention to yourself or perpetuating your presence in the minds and hearts of others. One study shows that around 1,000 selfies are uploaded on the Instagram every 10 seconds, or approximately 93 million selfies a day. Sadly, when such selfies are not “liked,” or get “canceled,” the senders are devastated. The golden rule tells us “love your neighbor as yourself.” If we read it closely, we realize that the golden rule makes self-love a prerequisite to loving others. It reminds us that we cannot keep love for ourself. It is self-diffusive. It is a yearning for self-transcendence, impelling us to live or die, not for ourselves but for a person, a cause, a belief, or even an ideology. As Jesus has shown us, the greatest love of all is sacrificial love. Without the willingness to sacrifice, self-love can be a recipe for disaster. For centuries, marriage has been one of the most tangible ways of expressing the sublimity of sacrificial love. Valentine’s Day would be most meaningful for married couples. In marriage, a man and woman promise to faithfully love each other “in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, until death do us part.” But in a culture that extols inordinate self-love, fuels the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, and glorifies celebrities who are serial adulterers, marital fidelity is fast becoming a thing of the past. How does one go against the current? A friend of mine who remains faithful to his wife for 36 years and always looks forward to Valentine’s Day told me: “When I got married, I know that my decision would necessarily exclude all other choices that are contrary to or incompatible with it. Every decision involves a renunciation. I must accept the fact that I cannot have it all.”

#THROUGH UNTRUE