Now that some people are several hundreds of RM poorer -- thanks to Valentine’s Day -- it is needful to ask a very pertinent question: What really is Valentine’s Day celebrating? Love, or the lack of it? 

If love is expressed everyday and is integral to our lives -- like breathing, drinking and eating are -- would there be a special day to celebrate or honour it?

There’s no special day in honour of or to celebrate breathing, drinking and eating. So, why devote one day to something that doesn’t seem evident every day, except occasionally and only in some cases?

When love happens, and occasionally, it becomes news! Why is that? Why is love publicised unless it is because it is so scarce?

Do you see love around you? What do you see?

Spouses in a loveless union. Lonely, straying husbands. Longsuffering wives. Children neglected without parental care and guidance, and some abused. Relatives growing distant. Neighbours who mind their own business. Families breaking down. Communities breaking up with the social unit getting smaller. Bosses compromising to keep their jobs. Workers short-changed to maximise profits. Politicians making promises which are hardly kept. Citizens crying out for justice, integrity and fairness, and hitting their heads against a wall. Economies falling apart, spelling doom, and etc, etc, etc!

Where is the love? And what is there to celebrate?

Everyone knows about love. But how many actually are practicing it? Some will say there is love -- in the heart -- and do as they please. What is the point of love when there is, but is not expressed for somebody else to receive it?

Like former US First Lady and now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview, after her husband was found out having sex with an intern in the Oval Office, “there is love,” when asked by the interviewer if there was love in their relationship. Yes, there was love. Love in the heart while he had sex with an intern!

This is love?

Like the very busy, powerful and successful man who spends so much of time outside his home meeting beautiful and intelligent women whom he shares a common work experience with and enjoys these relationships, and then feels guilty because he has a wife at home and there is love for her.

To relieve his guilt, he goes home (may be), but more likely gets his secretary to order an expensive bouquet for his wife, or he may buy expensive diamonds or gold for her. The longsuffering wife accepts it, because there is love!

I think wives know what the gesture means, but they choose to keep their silence -- to not rock their comfort zone. Frankly, women who get inordinately expensive gifts from men must always be wary if they are really trying to expiate their guilt. So, wives, if you get diamonds from your husbands, you do have a good reason to get suspicious!

Maybe, I am a cynic. But, I think not. Love has become the rarest “commodity” on Earth, despite more than 2000 years of Christian civilisation, the basis of which is love.

The Christian model of love is a great model, as embodied in the Personhood of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, the followers of Christ have not been very successful in following in His example. And, what you see is what we have got and are stuck with!

Why has that model not impacted the world so that love is as natural as breathing, and spreading to the furthest corners of the world? Even in the once powerful Christian nations of the developed, Western world, there is a dearth of love.

I can only say that love is not evident because love is not expressed, not flowing out of the daily affairs of life, not part of the social cementing fabric, not part of the public competitive sphere, not part of the international interweaving economies.

Love is simply absent! Absent in the marriage, family, neighbourhood, society and nation. Because love is absent, the individual struggles, and not finding love, settles for substitutes -- for divorce, sex, money, fame, excitement, business, illusion and eventually oblivion.

For the sake of love, Whitney Houston married someone not of her type, and not finding love, this beautiful and talented woman eventually descended into drugs. Is it surprising?

It is a story not uncommon among many. It is a sad picture I have painted about love. But true, love is not everyday; it has become the exception.

What can be done to reverse it? A day devoted to it like Valentine’s Day? No. That ultimately benefits mostly retailers.

Start by doing something today that shows you love someone -- something that not you appreciate, but that the other will, instead.

Like the Google Chrome Valentine’s Day greeting portrays: don’t just give presents; be there for that other person. Share in what he/she likes to do. Just be there ... .

(Gertrude has put this article in Education because she believes that love needs to be learnt!)

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