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When I was in 4th grade Jeremy X (I’ll spare him the humiliation of giving away his last name) would carry out marriage ceremonies with his Crayola crayons. Mr. Yellow would marry Ms. Blue and they’d live happily ever after. He’d then stick either yellow or blue up his nose or in his ear, in what was the strangest playing out of a honeymoon tryst I’d ever seen. At the time Jeremy was the hottest thing in the world in my eyes. So what if he talked to himself, and had sort of an odd imagination, he had the hardest kick in kickball and could skip two monkey bars on the playground. He was dreamy and surely the most attractive thing I could imagine at the time. When it came to showing Jeremy that I liked him, I knew there was only one day to make my feelings known…one day where it was o.k. to pass Jeremy that little note of my affection, to perhaps brush against him ever so slightly on the playground, or to say to him in my juvenile version of a seductive whisper, “Let me play Ms. Blue”. That day was St. Valentine’s Day.
Fast forward 15 years or so and Valentine’s Day still remains the only day where oozing and gushing over the presence of my love for another is deemed acceptable. When I say “acceptable”, I mean to others beside myself and whomever my love may be. We may be ensnarled in loves hold. We may be walking on air, half listening to other’s conversations, completely preoccupied, and drugged by that odious creature we call love, but we better not let it interfere with reality. The rest of the world, and its responsibilities seem a million miles away as we succumb to loves distracting hold. The only problem, this just isn’t the prescribed behavior of the norm, is it?
 The whole history of Valentine’s Day itself was spurned by establishments attempt to shut love out. During the third century in Rome, Emperor Claudius II, who was eager to round up a capable army, decided that single men who weren’t worried about leaving a wife and family behind in order to defend the Roman Empire, made much better soldiers. He therefore outlawed marriage. In stepped this priest named Valentine, who went against Claudius’ orders and continued to join young lovers in the bond of marriage, and was therefore condemned to death by the love grinch Claudius.
So henceforth, as we often do with holidays, we’ve commercialized Valentine’s third century efforts by coating it in candy hearts, chocolate teddy bears, and the sweet smell of red rose petals. As much as we celebrate love on this one day a year however, the world that commercializes and produces all that has become of this day doesn’t hold a place for the young lovers on the other 364 days. The Beatles said it best when they crooned, “You’ve got to hide your love away”.
Being in love is a wonderful high. It changes us, transforms us into these creatures that somehow reprioritize our lives in order to let love take center stage. It thrusts the twosome onto some intergalactic planet called LOVE, where the number one priority is the gratification that comes from being in the state of love.
It’s just this reprioritization that makes the act of being in love subversive. By being in love we are resisting the norm. The boring everyday rituals that make up our mundane life, yeah those things like work, school, and bills, just don’t seem as important as they once did. The lover is no longer being guided by that inertia that tells him “this is what you’re supposed to do…this is life”. To the lover, forgoing his everyday commitments in order to wander around a park smelling the tulips hand in hand with his love might seem much more important than sitting in his 6’x 6’ cubicle punching numbers or writing up that financial analysis all day long. What about that Calculus exam he had to study for or that day filled with errands he was supposed to run? It makes no difference to the lover, when the alternative finds him swimming in the depths of loves goo and mush the whole day through.
 Love and all its glory poses a threat to the natural order of our lives. Your boss would much rather have you completely focused on whatever it is you do there in your cube than chatting it up on the phone with your gal, or daydreaming about the night of passion that lies ahead. Productivity isn’t going to increase on the assembly line when all you can think of assembling is a collage titled “Ode to Love”. The lover has thus transformed out of that cog uniform the corporation wants him to slip into when he crosses the threshold of Workville. All that passion he can hardly keep hold of is thus deemed harmful to those work hounds that aim to drive him and mold him and keep him contained.
Forget sitting at home and watching t.v., taking in the marketing strategies and consumer ideals that bombard us on the boob tube. The man or woman in love is no longer a viable consumer willing to drink up all that advertised salvation in a bottle they’re trying to sell. The lover is now just too busy consuming love. Love is now the salvation, and nothing the little man in the box tries to sell us could be a better medication for all of life’s ills.
What about good old Claudius’ idea of what marriage, or the politically and spiritually binding contract of love, does to our ability to serve the system? I mean he did have a point there, didn’t he? The young man in love makes a much harder person to seduce into taking off and leaving his loved one to fight for the good of the country. Those with ties that bind the heartstrings are therefore much less willing to fight and die for an abstraction such as the state.
Love impels us to do things that might be deemed unpredictable, irresponsible, and even rebellious. The only master in the game of love is that which feeds the fire and makes our hearts beat faster. The average bourgeois man doesn’t rely on passion to fuel him. He is not overcome by smoldering desire. He is content with carrying out those goals prescribed to him by his duty to become a worthy citizen in the eyes of the majority. With no overwhelming thoughts or feelings to guide him, he is quite happy to adopt the dogma that tells him to wake up at 5 AM to punch the clock, to pay his bills by the due date, and to answer the call to duty when he is called upon to serve.
As much as we see the act of love portrayed on our film screens, used to sell mouthwash and airline tickets to Paris, when it comes down to it, love is discouraged within our society. There will be no getting carried away, no acting out of norm. It’s your duty to be responsible, to be reasonable, to keep your guard up and never let them see your feet leave the ground. There is no room for restriction, regulation, and rules in the world of true love. If you’re in it, keep it to yourself, save it for your own time, hide it in your boudoirs and your lazy day Sunday afternoon when that stuff is acceptable.
So I say if you want to resist, if you want to revolt against the norm, the corporate rat race, the bourgeoisie, than why not fall in love? It’s a whole lot more fun than standing outside in the elements with a picket sign shouting “I am not a cog”. Not to mention the fact that you get to be one of those lucky folks who doesn’t have to wait until February 14th to whisper “Will you be mine?” seductively into the ear of your Valentine.
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