Editor’s Note: Kathryn Bild is a writer, singer-songwriter, acting coach and Grammy Award-winning producer. She writes novels, screenplays and songs, and is author of the books, Acting From a Spiritual Perspective and The Actor’s Quotation Book. She lives in New York City.

When I was a girl in grammar school, Valentine’s Day was set up at school to be a win for everyone. Everyone gave everyone else a valentine. If there were 22 children in the class, each student walked into the class that morning with 21 valentines to distribute and left that afternoon with 21 received. Everyone was included by everyone; no one was — or felt — left out. 

For me, it got even better after school. My father was a romantic man and generous gift-giver to “his girls” — my mother and my sister and me. He was the bearer of gifts when he’d come home after work on Valentine’s Day: roses and a large heart-shaped box of Sees Candy for Mom, small heart-shaped boxes for my sister and me, plus “real” presents for us all. Not lavish, but thoughtful gifts. I still have a gold “K”-initial stick pin that I use to close the collar of my sweaters on cold days. And there were Valentine’s Day cards that had come in the mail from relatives. Valentine’s Day was a good day when I was a kid.

Then, as I grew into dating age — which, God-willing, we never grow out of — rather than by social mandate or from relatives (as much), my valentines came from boyfriends and husband(s). Or not. Some men think Valentine’s Day and everything about it is silly. Some just give you a card, or just say, “Happy Valentine’s Day.” Some buy you something from Victoria’s Secret or, better yet, from Frederick’s of Hollywood, which is more for them than for you — a distinction they’ll never understand but that will bug the heck out of you. Until you get a few more years on you and then you’ll start craving a man who wants you only for your body! 

But now I’m single. And I’m not dating — by choice. Hey, just the other day a lonely cab driver from another country asked me out. And I think there’s hope for a potential collision with a too-much-younger musician that would end badly and break my heart. So I have options — as well as the good sense not to exercise them! But what do I do with my Valentine’s Day? Days! I and how many hundreds of thousands, millions, others? In New York alone, it has recently been said, about 50 percent of adults live by themselves. How many of those are without lovers or sweethearts, and will be this Valentine’s Day?

My friend, Karen, has invited me and a few other of our single women friends to spend Valentine’s Day together. That’s cool, but I don’t want to. I’d like to want to, but I don’t. I don’t want to go out and celebrate how great it is to be single. Now, personally, I think it is great to be single — if your life is full and satisfying to you. No better or worse than being coupled — if your life is full and satisfying to you — however. And it’s certainly better to be single than to be in a bad, i.e., “unhappy” relationship, if you can bear being on your own (or even if you can’t) — which you need to be, even when you are in a relationship. So I’m going to decline Karen’s invitation, because I don’t want to celebrate being in any marital or non-marital clique or social set, distinct and set apart from the whole. Because I’m not, really. None of us is. We are individuals, each one of us equal, related and, yet, autonomous emanations of one Source, one with the Whole — not set apart from it. Not separate or alone, or even “coupled,” for that matter. After all, people don’t come in pairs. We are, each of us, a crucial — and intentional — part of the collective. And that’s what I’m going to celebrate this Valentine’s Day — the love, not for one person, or even, like my Dad did, for one family, but for our Whole family, everyone included by everyone. This is Valentine’s Day, darn it! A day of love, wherein we say, “I love you!”