Be kind, not everyone is hooked up on Valentines

First things first: whoever is in charge of the sun, could you please turn it down a notch?

Bana, it is hot. So hot that calling your girl sunshine now would probably be overkill.

Weak joke aside and speaking of all things hot, by the time you are reading this, I’ll be a little bit buzzed, somewhat high, on cloud nine, gliding up in the sky, thus what you will be reading is the plain truth.

Lately, you may have noticed that your emotions are a bit more intense. You don’t need to be a scientist but if you stay anywhere in Kenya that is not Juja, you will notice that the full moon is out. And with that, it aggravates a lot of feelings. Spare a thought for your single friends, in this scorching hot January, and be magnanimous with your words.

I have noticed that we have a tendency to offer backhanded compliments, a sandwich of praises betwixting the beef of snideness underneath. And then cover it all up with the classic: “I will not dim myself so you can shine.” No, you’re not being mindful, you’re rude.

I say this because next week is Valentine’s week and despite this paganistic ritual gorging its fangs deep into hapless’ men's hearts (and pockets), out of every spouse who will be receiving red roses, another will get a visit from the Grim Reaper, with flowers too, only to mark the death of their relationship. Love has since become a competition. “But affections are not things and persons never can become possessions, matters of ownership. The desolate know this immediately and only the trivial pretend that it can be otherwise”—so wrote Elizabeth Hardwick in Seduction and Betrayal—she who stoically endured the countless infidelities of her husband Robert Lowell.

The amorous estuary of Valentine’s Day is befouled by the flotsam of capitalism but it needn’t remain this polluted forever. It’s almost as if, in our buy-one-get-one-free society we assume that if we can spend large on dating, we’ll be able to buy ourselves happy relationships. I know I am polishing the brass on the titanic because my social timeline is all about that red day, and goddam menus, and side chic tears. WhatsApp statuses in my phone are serving passive aggression: “Your girlfriend has a man who has more money than you and you will find out on Tuesday next week.” Like Catholic guilt, you pretend to hate it, but I think part of you loves it.

As a writer, I have come to juxtapose the blithe sexual picaresque of my youth with the contrasting Sturm und Drang in my heart. And how. Let me explain: I am in the final year of my 20s and if they have taught me something, is that love is a dreadful barometer for relationships. I mean you don’t stop loving someone just because you hate them. True story: one of my closest friends was recently dumped—again (yes by the same girl. Yes, I wrote about. Hell, yes I am laughing)—so bad he had to move towns.

I tell him it was about time. They were a mismatch. And then I urge him to watch ‘The Godfather’, probably the best sepia film ever created. The people who watch The Godfather, with a taste for its cold black water, do it to stay in shape. It’s an ode to the days when men could solve their problems with a kind word and a gun—because as every man knows, you can get a lot more with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word.

The crux of the matter is that a lot of men will go deeper into their pockets next week trying to impress their beaus. For the very few who won’t, or can’t, please don’t sneer at them. 

As [Rudyard] Kipling said, "The female of the species is deadlier than the male." The key to all good human behaviour is mutual respect and trust. With that, almost anything will work. Without it, nothing will. 

Comparisons are odious and nearly always absurdly reductive but here we go anyway: women can destroy as much as they can build you. But no one is going to build with you. No one is coming to your rescue. Things are just not what they used to be. Relationships are not just what they used to be.

You see, I've been to the mountain top. I've seen the promised land.

I have loved and I have lost.

Boy oh boy, how I have loved.

With alacrity.

With fidelity.

With vigour.

With grace.

I have loved honestly and freely, giving myself to the service of the other. But sometimes it just doesn’t work. Accept that sometimes life just doesn’t make sense. Get on with it. Accept that not all of us will find that one person who will be our sole mate—still get on with it. Accept it because it saves time because it is rare, and rarer so not easily earned. As you toast to the landscape of your future together, remember that you are the lucky one, and fate tends to collide with faith, and tides turn and what used to be ‘forever bae’ turns into ‘toxic ex.’ Be kind. 

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