The Loves We Must Experience
A Love Campaign for Singles
In the thickness of January’s harmattan, before February’s weather friction added dust to my flow, I replied to a lady’s picture on her WhatsApp status thus, ‘Am I frozen? Yes. Is this glow making me melt? Absolutely yes’. For me, love, like writing, has always been simple, yet hard. I lived this paradox so much that, in 2022, I wrote Beauties of These Days, an anthology. This piece veers from the vicissitudes of romantic relationships which my anthology accentuates, and focuses on loves, I believe, we all–or must all–experience, yet often overlook in chasing the Valentine Love.
Familiar Familial Love
I have always known familial love is important and I have poems on it but a renewed understanding dawned on me a few years ago while in the hospital bed. I know it is a no-brainer but we all know how familiarity has become the bane of truth — the fate of platitudes. Unlike Valentine love, familial affection rarely has us running on oxytocin to send flowers or blow trumpets as many are in this season until that family member is out of season. I am not gloom-tripping you.
The hospital bed showed me that a good home is the best place to get the raw love we often seek. Follow me. If that relationship where you both are nuts over each other crosses into marriage, logic states that your kids (if you decide to have them) will enjoy that immense love without putting in any or as much work as you both did.
Therefore, as a child in a home where you are already loved and don’t go through the several ‘we have to talk’ sessions that abound in romantic relationships, is it not better to relish family, and rest?
Nevertheless, familial love requires work too, and this is often where the problem lies, especially among siblings. You cannot sacrifice for your sibling but can tour the city with a lady you met three months ago. The work starts with the little things and conversations: call them often, plan a random surprise (by doing their laundry), gift them for achieving a feat (like moving up 15 positions in class), and so on. Love is simple…yet hard, because that ‘last born’ is always on your nerves. I guess that’s familial love too.
I have also realised that those with the most genuine concern for your life–however wrong you may feel about it–are family. There are so many other ways family will always show that they love you. I saw a carousel by Zikoko of screenshots from X showing how people got over heartbreak. Most noted that their families were pivotal in recovery — not even friends, but I will come to this after a disclaimer.
At this point, I deflate all Sherlock Holmes’ deductions. Heartbreak didn’t get me hospitalised. Side eye.
Let’s proceed. I understand that the exception, in this case, are toxic families–possibly formed due to chronic love deficiency–but I know little about this so I move on to ‘friends’
Closer Friends Than Brothers
If you have friends you consider family, you know everything I want to say in this section and are free to jump to the last one.
I am blessed with amazing, deeply loving friends and thank God for them daily. I didn’t always have such friends or friends at all, and honestly, it is not just about the friends. I realised I love deeply, so I started appreciating myself and them more, and worked on managing my friendships better. In no time, I noticed all the friends left around my nucleus shared my traits and would easily sacrifice for me.
On friendships, I found out that, just like romantic relationships, you do not have to stay in them when they become toxic to you, and if you are the toxic one, repent and work on fixing the friendship. I have been in both scenarios and I know how well I have worked to keep friends at different orbitals in maintaining the bonds and electricity.
More plainly, reciprocity is not limited to romantic relationships — it applies to friendships too. If most of their core views do not align with yours, why are they still your friends? If it is giving parasitism or commensalism, please why are you still there?
The Valentine love is good but I tell you the love a friend gives is better. Moreso, for valentine love to be strong, friendship love must be concrete. I like to blame the feel-good hormones but I have read that friendship and family release them too, so we might just have all we keep looking for in a mate.
I was once guilty of this one but I will say it. Your romantic partner can never be your all in all. You will always need friends for different aspects of your life but they are not there to take the place of your partner.
The Love Purpose Drives
We all have causes that own our passion. For many, it’s religion; for some, it’s humanity; for others, it’s a career or an ideology. Some were so driven with love for purpose that they forgot romance or lived fine without it. Talk of The Wright Brothers and the aeroplane, Jesus and the Crucifixion, Nikola Tesla and several inventions, Queen Elizabeth I and her Kingdom, Ìbùkúnolúwa and his anthology… Okay, I’m kidding. I could go on but I know you get the point. But do you? Instead of pursuing purpose-driven love, some of you will still send a Valentine’s package to that (wo)man in pursuit of Valentine love. Okay, don’t mind me.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Updated: March 2024
