Valentine’s Day can be difficult for a single person. Although the day is meant to celebrate familial and friendship love as well as romantic love, the holiday has recently come to emphasize romantic love over other types of love, which is perhaps why it has earned the nickname “Single Awareness Day.”

The problem with Valentine’s Day isn’t so much that we have a holiday celebrating love, but rather that we don’t seem to understand that it’s okay to be single, just like it’s okay not to be.

Your value and worth as a person comes from more than your marital status. Single or not, you are an intelligent human being on this earth for a reason. You have the capacity to affect great change and you should not let anything, much less your marital status, keep you from being the person you should be. There’s no reason why people who are single can’t enjoy Valentine’s Day.

Something that I have started doing recently is going out to dinner with my friends in the evening. After dinner, we usually go to someone’s house, eat dessert and watch a movie. It’s not an extravagant evening, but it’s a fun time and it reminds us that there are better things to do on Valentine’s Day than doing nothing because we don’t have a date.

I don’t know what your situation is this Valentine’s Day, but I would encourage you to make the best out of it. Buy yourself flowers and chocolates if you want. Surround yourself with people you love and celebrate your friendship. But mostly importantly, realize that you are an incredible person full of potential and one day in the year can’t change that.