It’s more than a little counter productive to complain about Valentine’s Day when you don’t have a valentine. That should go without saying but in today’s modern age, common sense is not so common.

Twitter is a mess on most holidays where people are not able to indulge due to the absence of whatever is being celebrated. Whether it’s Father’s Day or this Hallmark created holiday of adoration, people love to remind everyone just how miserable they are. I don’t understand what individuals get out of condemning day’s they are not able to celebrate. Silence, I was raised to believe, is a virtue; an underappreciated virtue that disappears when social media users get the urge to share their grief with the world.

I feel nothing but empathy for them. Mainly because it must take an individual with no pride at all to announce to their followers that they are not celebrating Valentine’s Day. It makes many singles feel as if this is the representation they fall under. The bitter, misery loves company type, which is not true at all. People who do not have a significant other to celebrate this day with indulge in it in other ways. Love is not restricted to the one you share with a man or woman, but family, friends or even people who you appreciate being in your life.

In middle school, this holiday was not that complicated. No one was left out, and the candy and cards was a universal gift, not one restricted to a lover or a boyfriend or girlfriend. It was more inclusive and didn’t feel like an exclusive group in which to be drafted– the group for the loved or taken. Too much value has been placed on relationships, value that is displaced. Instead of valuing the individual we value what being with the individual means.

The fact is that it means we are not alone, that having someone is better than not having anyone at all. That logic spreads to the people who are not able to indulge it. Left to feel inadequate in some way left to overcompensate for this lack of a ‘somebody’ by announcing to the world how much he or she doesn’t need a ‘somebody.’

Maybe we should be less exclusive in how we see Valentine’s Day, or maybe we should reevaluate how we see the people we celebrate it with. The holiday isn’t nearly as morbid and detached as the people who celebrate it. The people that want the world to know how glorious their independence to compensate for the exile they feel from this holiday. Or, the people who see their significant other as nothing more than a trophy to dust off and throw in the loner’s face. Both fail to appreciate the space their in, and focus too much on the superficial value of a single or taken status.

Let’s evolve our state of mind and relocate the focus onto the people we love, rather than the symbol of this day. I promise it will make you feel less lonely if you aren’t alone.