“It’s just a day invented for commercial purposes, a reason given to spend more money. At best it’s a saccharine display of shallow sentimentality, at worst a De Beersesque attempt to commodify the affectionate bonds of human relationships in order to form a more perfect quarterly profit report.”

Yeah, I get tired of listening to me too. I’m glad my wife is so patient. Sadly, I’ve realized over the years that I have a bad habit of throwing sentences like this out anytime I’m trying to justify avoiding the work of buying gifts and writing cards — you know, human stuff — the stuff you do for the people you love.

It’s not that I don’t think it’s true — at least partially. Valentine’s Day especially has a bad habit of making lonely people feel more lonely and making couples mistake chocolate for passion and flowers for affection. In true consumerist fashion, the more money you spend, the greater your declarations, the less you need to actually do to check the relationship maintenance box for the year. Pay the love bill, balance the checkbook, move on to more important matters, like Netflix.

Yeah, it’s true, Valentine’s Day, or any holiday for that matter, can be a crock.

But it doesn’t have to be.

It never had to be, really. I don’t believe we’re contractually bound to honor shallowness with more shallowness. I am human. We are human, creations of God, walking temples of meaning. I have it within my power to redeem anything meaningless and make it meaningful. I am not required on this day to whisper sweet nothings to my wife. She is my wife, and I can whisper the world to her. I don’t have to buy her roses, her name is Sunnie, and I can cut her some sunflowers. There is no law obliging me to a candlelit dinner if I want the stars to do it instead, and I can ditch Spotify’s top romantic playlists because I know the songs that mean the most to us, to her. In short, I can complain about how society stripped the soul out of romance, or I can remind myself I found the one my soul loves, and remind her too…

So today I’m going to remind her. I’m going to take a second here and talk about her, because I love her, and a person can’t help but talk about what they love.

I want to talk about how the first time she stared into my eyes for more than a few seconds I had to walk away so fast she thought she had done something wrong. I couldn’t handle how honestly she had looked at me. I want to remind her that her blue eyes wrecked me that night, pierced right through years of learned detachment, and somehow found my soul. Here was this tough-as-nails karate woman, a fighter, Alaskan built and tested, weathered by arctic winters and gymnastics callouses, and then there was this sweet blond girl who wore her heart on her sleeve and had a smile that could quite literally light up a room, and somehow they both became my wife, and I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around it. And I went from a dude who loathed all public displays of emotion to a man who writes public love letters to his wife on Valentine’s day.

I’ve seen the world with her. I’ve held her under the Northern Lights, kissed her on top of the Eiffel Tower, Strolled through Manhattan with her hand in mine, toasted under the shadow of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, and driven with her by my side across the U.S. I’ve had sunset dinners with her from the Pacific to the Caribbean, and rainy days in bed doing nothing. I’ve known her only 7 years, been married for less than 4, spent many months of those short years thousands of miles away from her, but I feel like I’ve known her my whole life. I don’t remember what it felt like to not have her in my life, and I don’t want to.

My wife has worn her heart on her sleeve the entire time I’ve known her. I’ve seen her endure the deaths of close loved ones, the ugly criticism of others who don’t have her grace, and the gossip of those who had difficulty accepting the expertise and authority of a woman in her 20s. I’ve seen her crank out 90 hour work weeks and still smile at little kids in her studio at the end of a busy day. Somehow, the toughness of life has not diminished her spirit, made her jaded, or hardened her heart. When we got married, I said in my vows that she reminded me of a flower growing between the cracks in a busy sidewalk. Most people walk by, failing to see the beauty amidst the concrete because they are too caught up in their lives to stop and look.

Thank God I looked.

It’s Valentine’s day, and I don’t care what Hallmark and Hershey are selling. Let’s take a moment to honor the people in our lives that mean the most to us. Forget checking the box. Remember why you love the one you love, remind yourself of the things that make her special, that make him human, that make them lovable.

Then go remind them too.