Its day five after the valentine day flurry where most people the world over were working overtime to meet self-imposed deadlines to prove to another how much they love them. I know people who spent money and time trying to prove this love, this love, not shown the whole of last year from the last valentine day. I know people who drove their loved ones to distraction by insisting that he/she begs borrows or steal to deliver a box of chocolates and a couple of sad flowers otherwise the love is off.
I have just been wondering if Valentine is the only day you show love and after that until next February. I have also been wondering if valentine day gifts and lunch are the only things that indicate love for another. I have seen men, women scammed by faux lovers who borrow money to do the valentine things, put one in the family way (if it’s a man) break a heart (if it’s a woman) and run. In the end, you offered your body for a valentine plate of chicken and chips and gave your heart for a smile and a nicely wrapped box of boxers. The amount of hearts shattered post-valentine is best imagined. After this, there are those who would vow never to love again.
Then there is the category of those who ogle after valentine lovers, who do not have anyone send them gifts and who have no one to send gifts. I always worry about them because the season throws up so much fakeness, so much false love, so much advantage taking and so much gift gifting that it unnerves those without a valentine. I have been without a valentine now for the longest and I am okay. This is because the real meaning of Valentine is really about a Priest, St Valentine who was marrying off couples secretly in an iron regime, which had stopped the marriage. His legacy was that he allowed love to thrive when it was being stultified by a dictator. St Valentine of Rome was beheaded on the 14th of February for propagating love. But what do businessmen and women do? They turn it into a commercial enterprise and turn it into a multibillion-dollar business. Merchandises, franchises, gifting, wrapping, cakes and pastries, media platforms and restaurants are booming on the 14th of February, year after year.
Are you the office witch making everyone unhappy and sharing wickedness or are you the office Angel who always has something nice to say?
But I would like to offer a different perspective on Valentine. Have you enabled peace in your office and ensured that everyone is happy? Do you treat your partner right? You are my valentine. Have you been responsible for breaking up a marriage and causing kata-kata in another person’s marriage? You certainly cannot be my valentine. Children in that broken marriage ultimately suffer emotional trauma.
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What did you succeed in doing? I don’t care how many valentines you have. You are definitely not my person. Are you a sister-in-law who is ready to break a marriage so you can now marry your brother abi after you have driven his wife? Or are you a brother in law who wants to see his brother’s marriage broken? How are you Valentine compliant? Ditto mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law. Allow the young couple to grow. Are you the office witch making everyone unhappy and sharing wickedness or are you the office Angel who always has something nice to say? Make your choice of how you want to celebrate after the valentine blues of the 14th of February. Are you able to visit a motherless baby’s home, pay the fees of an indigent person, and make someone smile, walk someone through their grief, show kindness to the brokenhearted, give of your time and listen to a depressed person or share a burden? These are my people in the true valentine club. Not the ones who are scamming women and scamming men and believe they are sharp. That’s not valentine, that’s fraud.
So let us return to my not having a valentine for years and years. Of course, I love perfumes and a nice gift, I love shoes and a great cake and oodles of jewellery but I do not want gifts restricted to that day. I want to be treated right every day and taken out every week. I want to have my bespoke perfume gifted every other month and flowers from time to time. I want to be swept off my feet always. Not just on Valentine’s Day.
