With Valentine’s Day comes chocolate, flowers, pink hearts and oversized stuffed animals. It’s a day dedicated to celebrating your love for others and grandly displaying your affection. However, we tend to overlook the true meaning of this holiday. We get the impression that this holiday is solely about celebrating romance when in reality it should be more than that.

This holiday should be a day where we honor not only romantic love, but all kinds of love, and show our devotion to others.

We used to do a better job observing this holiday when we were younger.

If you think back to your elementary school days, you might remember that Valentine’s Day was a day where you received lollipops, fun dip and other sweets. Your classmates were in awe of the amount of candy that filled their buckets. In addition to the treats, small cards were often attached and sent sweet Valentine’s greetings.

Whether you were friends with all of your classmates or just friendly acquaintances, everyone was given the same thoughtful cards.

I vividly remember sitting at my kitchen table excitedly writing these messages to each of my classmates with my multicolored pens in hope that they would enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. I loved showing my appreciation for those around me without having to have some sort of romantic connection to them.

Sadly, young children today are too young to realize the importance of such cards, and once they do become old enough to appreciate them, their perception of the holiday has changed so that only those in devoted relationships are included.

This year, let’s take a page out of our past selves’ book and express our affection for everyone we love – friends, family, significant others and all. Romantic or not, it feels good to both give and receive compassion and admiration, so why not spread the love this Valentine’s Day.