Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. You know what that means, time to find your one true love…for the next week or so. This is the time of year where single people feel the most single and couples become more loving. The real question I have is, does the pressure of valentine’s day affect you?

Valentine’s Day does affects me because this “holiday” makes people feel like outsiders if they don’t have someone special. I try looking at it like it’s just another day, but the way the holiday is publicized forces you to acknowledge the day.

I interviewed a few students asking how they feel about this holiday and how it affects them. One student claims she doesn’t care much for this holiday and said, “If I want chocolate, I will buy it for myself.” After hearing her response, I started to wonder if everyone just links Valentine’s Day with receiving treats or receiving love.

When I first think of Valentine’s day, I think it’s a day where you express love to someone and an extra opportunity to spoil them. Valentine’s Day is a day full of love and hearts everywhere. Shouldn’t that mean that instead of depending on the gift from other people to celebrate, we should focus more on the meaning behind the holiday?

I decided to ask an adult about how they feel about Valentine’s Day. Her response was surprising because she said it wasn’t the greatest holiday because it tends to put people down: “Holidays are supposed to make people happy and filled with joy not make them sad and feel bad about themselves.”

If this holiday effects adults, imagine the effect it has on students. As high school students, it is already hard enough to handle school and social lives. Now, they are trying to blend in the crowd by trying to find the right person to be “cuddly” with for the holiday.

As the new generation, I believe we should change Valentine’s Day from being about couples and their love life, to just showing love and care to one another. This way we are bringing each other up instead of each other down.