I have always liked Valentine's Day. At my elementary school, every kid would bring in a bag full of candy and paper Valentine cards for each classmate. The teachers would create goody bags for us. We played games and baked cookies and had a feast to imitate the feast of Saint Valentine. Couple that with the heart-shaped box of chocolates that awaited my spot at the breakfast table, and I was running on a steady sugar high for the entire day. I'm not big on sappy or conventional. I often find myself disliking things out of pure over-saturation. That's not to say I'm not romantic or emotional, because I am definitely both of those things. But Valentine's Day is one of those things that seems to fall in the category of things I should despise. A profit-driven, gender role affirming, societal pressure of a "holiday" with all the implications those things come with...you can read into it all you want, but I could care less about all the statements Valentine's Day makes about the state of society or feminism or America or any of that stuff. I simply love the idea of eating sweets and spreading love. Romantic love, platonic love, familial love, it's all really the same basic element when it comes down to it. So be happy that on this day, the world is swelling with an overflow of love. It reminds me of Thanksgiving, almost. Valentine's day is a second day of Thanksgiving with a more specific thing to be thankful for. So many people want to whine and argue about the true origins of Thanksgiving, about the symbolic notion that we as a society feel the need to only give thanks once a year. Valentine's Day is not about saying "I love you" once a year, it's about taking a day to be grateful for all the love in your life. It doesn't mean that you are automatically not going to think of love for the next 364 days. It's just a day of intensification, of more, of excess. Be happy, because you are loved. It is an inherent part of the human condition. Now go eat a cupcake.