A New Valentine's Day Massacre

Yesterday was Valentines Day and I hope you achieved heights of romantic pleasure that you haven’t received in a long time. It is a day of the year where we try to universally keep as a reminder to tell those we love that we do indeed love them or are at least thankful that they are in our lives. Hallmark tries to help us by still publishing cards that say nice stuff for us but it is reported that 85% of card buyers are women. If a guy doesn’t buy a card it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her. People used to write love letters especially from those guys who went away to war. Steve Jobs ruined the love letters. Our new soldiers skyped each other and you hoped you remembered each moment of your one minute video message. Today we have text messages we can look back on and get all excited over a cartoon face and a four line message. That is the evidence that true love has been reduced to. Hopefully you didn’t delete your texts.

Don’t worry folks, Americans are expected to spend $20 billion dollars on Valentine’s Day this year in 2018 the most in 5 years.  So, even if the letter writing or cards are scarce lately the chocolates and flowers are still a booming business. It is all about expressing yourself somehow. Share the love openly. Walk down that street proudly with that bouquet of flowers and let them all see that you love someone.  Then share a picture of your smiling face smelling those roses on Facebook for all to see that yes, you are loved. Hopefully that type of activity will go viral and for one day people will be smiling for one day instead of chopping heads off, slashing faces for just walking down the street or mass shootings just because you can’t handle all the drugs you are taking.  Yeah! For one day try to love someone or at least make them smile.
Well sadly yesterday love couldn't happen. There was yet again another mass shooting that took the lives of 17 high school kids. It is only February yet this Valentine's Day shooting marks the 18th time there were fatal shootings in American schools so far. I guess guns are more available and wanted than any expression of love. Trump got a $30 million dollar campaign contribution from the National Rifle Association and not from Hallmark. So, he is supporting a bill that already passed the House of Representatives wanting guns to be allowed to be carried across state lines to any state in America. How is that a goal for peace and love?

If you really want to know about love watch any sappy old movie in black and white where all the men wore suits all the time and the women wore silky tight fitting sexy gowns. They knew it all about romance and love. You actually looked forward to that one kiss at the end of the movie just before the credits rolled and yet you were satisfied and finished the job with your woman. Those were the days of romance and love. True love transcends time. It is hard to purge the love of your life even over time. Whatever way you want to communicate your feelings for someone whether it is through a love letter, card, flowers, chocolate or any other indulgence you both like to do together, share the love. Let em know that you care and if you don’t care for anyone, find someone to love, It is a good feeling. Love yourself.
So this year, hug your children extra hard and hope they survive the next day at school because America's children and people are dying from hate and mass shootings all the time. In our churches, at our concerts, on our street, in our homes, at the airport and at the movies. How can we get guns out of the hands of teens and crazy people and back only in the hands of the law? Be grateful that you are still here to love someone.