February 15 is the day officially dedicated to all the singles, known as Singles Awareness Day or also as Singles Appreciation Day. Created around the notion that Valentine’s Day is not particularly kind to people who do have a special someone or those who are heart broken, Singles Awareness Day (SAD) seems like a logical approach to celebrating yourself, irrespective of your love life status at first.
A glance at the official site of Singles Awareness Day is enough to understand that this day was created mostly in retaliation to Valentine’s Day. The site states, “Sure, some people would prefer to have their February celebration on February 14, but the rest of us appreciate the break from the commercialism.”
It further states, “The goal of Singles Awareness Day is to let singles have celebrations, get-togethers, etc and to exchange gifts with their single friends. The awareness day was established by single people who were just sick of feeling left out on Valentine's Day and support of the day is growing every year.”
On one hand, the website takes an anti-commercialism stand and does not want to be party to consumerism and then later it talks about exchanging gifts with all the single friends. Hence, it is not clear what their exact ideology is.
Sure, single-hood can be a choice, a way of life, is all about self-love and self-care and something we can celebrate. Being single can be empowering as it can teach us volumes about self-sufficiency and self-reliance.
Some of the suggested activities on the official SAD website are sending yourself flowers, planning parties for other singles to mix and meet and to participate in some sort of single's event (recommended for those who do not wish to be single).
But one can engage in such activities on any particular day of the year anyway, even during Valentine’s week or on Valentine’s Day itself. Valentine’s can be about self-love and focusing on your inner world as well. In fact, the increase in the number of events especially catering to singles on Valentine’s Day in all the metropolises across the globe, indicates the fact that people have begun to understand and celebrate their singledom better, against the convention of Valentine’s Day just being only for or about couples.
In order to subvert the entire mainstream understanding of what Valentine’s Day is all about, one must also give some thought to what all Valentine’s Day isn’t about. Sure, on the surface SAD seems to be anti-Valentine’s in spirit, but a little further reading and research might make you question that.
Hence, being single is ideally about living your life to the fullest, irrespective of whether you support SAD or not. Irrespective of whether you feel the need to celebrate your single-hood or be proud of it or not.
