{"id":12965,"date":"2020-02-11T17:57:07","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T00:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=12965"},"modified":"2020-02-11T17:57:07","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T00:57:07","slug":"its-valentines-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2020\/02\/11\/its-valentines-time\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Valentine\u2019s Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Different meanings for different folks<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

BY ERIC VALENTINE<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Lupercalia most likely derives from lupus, \u201cwolf,\u201d though both the etymology and its significance are obscure (bronze wolf\u2019s head, 1st century AD). Photo credit: Wikipedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cValentine\u201d is not my surname. It\u2019s a pen name I use to honor my first wife who passed away on Valentine\u2019s night three years to the minute she and I shared our first kiss. I\u2019m not making this up. And I\u2019m not trying to buzzkill anyone\u2019s happy, romantic day.<\/p>\n

But for two-plus decades now, celebrating Feb. 14 is a navigation between honoring my deceased wife and any significant other who may be leasing my heart in the here and now. I\u2019ve just started lightly dating someone\u2014let\u2019s call her Beth\u2014I want to keep around, so I\u2019d be lying if I said I wasn\u2019t feeling a little lost right about now.<\/p>\n

You may think all this would make me jaundiced toward the pseudo holiday, but it doesn\u2019t. Holidays based on the concept of love sound more like a solution than a problem to me.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, just like Christmas and New Year\u2019s, a portion of the population\u2014both coupled and singled\u2014struggle with the implications behind the special day.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight around February 15 I inevitably start fielding calls about hopelessness and disappointment. And so it\u2019s at this time of year that I can\u2019t help wondering whether we wouldn\u2019t all be better off if Valentine\u2019s Day was no longer setting up that huge gap between expectations and reality for so many couples,\u201d writes Melissa Orlov in a Psychology Today article called \u201cThe Problem with Valentine\u2019s Day: For some couples, this holiday hurts more than it helps.\u201d<\/p>\n

Orlov\u2019s article highlights the inevitable disillusionment that follows for at least one half of a couple with high expectations and not-so-high follow through.<\/p>\n

And then there are articles like \u201cDealing with Valentine\u2019s Day Depression\u201d by Dr. Paul Greene on the Anxiety And Depression Association of America website. He focuses on people who have recently gone through a split-up and offers a listicle of advice on how to cope. The listicle\u2014which, among other things, suggests avoiding substance abuse and separating legit feelings from destructive thoughts\u2014makes sense.<\/p>\n

Yet, it seems that\u2019s what we should be doing every day, any time. And so the inevitable social media posts, radio ads, and love-themed TV shows seep into our mindset and wreak some level of havoc.<\/p>\n

When I find myself disillusioned, I try to see it as a good thing. Who wants to be living through an illusion? And an effective way to wipe away illusion is to think past the Hallmark-card version of Valentine\u2019s and understand its origin. You don\u2019t have to be an historical scholar to find this Wikipedia entry:<\/p>\n

Lupercalia was an ancient, possibly pre-Roman pastoral annual festival, observed in the city of Rome between 13\u201315 February (the start of spring at that time in that part of the world) to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility. Lupercalia was also called dies Februatus, after the instruments of purification called februa, which gave February (Februarius) its name.<\/em><\/p>\n

The advent of spring. Purification and health. Averting evil. Nothing depressing about that. So, if you\u2019re feeling stressed out or a little down when Friday comes around, just think about those Lupercalia things a little more and the Hallmark vibes a little less. You\u2019ll be fine.<\/p>\n

Now, what to get Beth?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Different meanings for different folks BY ERIC VALENTINE \u201cValentine\u201d is not my surname. It\u2019s a pen name I use to honor my first wife who passed away on Valentine\u2019s night three years to the minute she and I shared our first kiss. I\u2019m not making this up. And I\u2019m not trying to buzzkill anyone\u2019s happy, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,54],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12965","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-commentary","8":"category-wellness"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}