February 13: Madly in Love with Me Day

FINALLY.  A holiday for my beautiful and passionate ego to run wild!  So rarely is there a day for me to stop and just contemplate my true and honest greatness.  I'm better than all of you!

Wait.

What?

That's not the actual spirit of the holiday?  Well.  Shit.

When we first stumbled onto this holiday we thought it would be a good excuse to goof off and say insanely egotistical things.  Actually, there is a great message behind it and a reason why it falls on February 13th every year.

The movement is mostly focused on women and girls and the idea is to teach the fairer sex, in particular, that it isn't actually fairer or weaker or less deserving of confidence and love.  See, basically as soon as New Year's ends, it becomes time to load every aisle in every grocery store with Valentine's candy.  Candy that can either be bought for someone you love...

...or sacrificed to the God of loneliness.

So, instead of wallowing in the lead up to Singles Awareness Day, Christine Arylo came up with a holiday for women to celebrate their inner wonderful.  There have been a lot of events and the holiday has expanded significantly over the years.  It makes sense - as much as people roll their eyes at self-help books, there are known psychological benefits to positive thinking.

So, even though the holiday is more geared toward women, Justin and I both took a few minutes to think about our own best qualities and really feel good about those things.  Here are our top five:

Mine:

1. I'm smart

2. I'm loyal

3. I'm funny

4. I'm generous

5. I'm hard-working

Justin's

1. He is kind-hearted

2. He is resilient

3. He is loving

4. He is hopeful

5. He is smart

It was NOT an easy exercise.  The thing is - being humble is important.  Not believing yourself to be smarter than the people around you is a good quality -- not believing yourself to be smart at all is a different thing entirely.  But when you're sitting there, talking about yourself, it just feels... off.  I think that's something that should change.  There is nothing wrong with being happy with who we are and being able to speak to that out-loud.  I know both Justin and I are happy people in our own minds - but why is talking about our own good qualities so taboo, I wonder.  I don't have an answer - it just got me thinking.

There's a meme that has been floating around for a while that we thought of a lot of on this holiday.

I love this meme and I love it when it resurfaces on my Facebook feed.  Unlike all of those darn "share if you agree that ten people won't share this because they're afraid of sharing about this important topic that you'll look bad if you don't share" ones.  If you post those... stop it and never do it again.

Anyway, whether that is real or accurate or just made up - it is wonderful advice.  Over time, hate begets hate and love begets love.  That's why this holiday is great.  It is important to love ourselves - it is what opens us up to love each other as friends, family, lovers and fellow men.  The holiday was wonderful and enlightening and I would highly recommend putting effort into loving yourself, even if you are doing it belated this year.