What’s Love got to do with it?

The Quest

Tonye Cole

Love…that word seems to be at the center of so much confusion in our world today. It’s at the heart of troubles in the home and the reason; it seems, for why marriages disintegrate. Love is blamed for the battles of the sexes and wherever peace is elusive on earth, the root cause, I see, can be traced to love…the lack of it that is.

It is love that causes the heart of women to skip so fleetingly and responsible for the giddy highs of girls post puberty. Love has a way of reducing men to do amazingly foolish things; taking dares of extreme irrationality to prove a needless point to mates. Surely love is an enigma many try so hard to comprehend.

Growing up exposed me to what I thought was love; the vain belief that variety was the spice of life and as men, we have the inhuman capacity to love multiple women, spread across various frontiers. A reckless description that making love equates to love. Something, I concluded, was wrong with that equation as it brought too much stress and sorrow to bear.

And so one day, in much despair, I settled upon a quest to discover true love. Is it possible, I asked, to love my wife to the exclusion of all others? To my utter surprise I discovered that love is life. It is tolerant and kind, caring and compassionate. It is sacrificial and unselfish, giving without demanding. It is bears pain to bring a smile to others and stands in harm’s way to protect the other.

I discovered that love was a choice, a very deliberate one at that, to see the best of you in the eyes of another. I learnt by sowing love in the life my partner and I reaped a bountiful harvest of love beyond comprehension, for her life blossomed immeasurably and turned my everyday a pleasure to behold.

And so by giving of myself wholly to my love, I came to understand why God gave wholly of Himself, for indeed God is Love and love is life.

Tonye Cole, Co-Founder, Group Executive Director, Sahara Group

Love, a divine gift

Maymunah Kadri

Love is a divine gift, a light of our life. True love can make our lives happier, more beautiful, and more meaningful.

Valentine should not be a one day ceremony. It’s a NO for me and psychologically, it is not healthy. It causes heightened anxiety, depression and sometimes suicide due to heartbreaks and other disappointments. People should learn to express their LOVE every day, to everyone and everywhere. If this is done, the world will be a better place.

Romantic love has been around a long time, and the idea of falling madly and uncontrollably in love is kind of a paradox. We’re supposed to be in control of so many aspects of our psychics, so many aspects of nature, and here’s something that can be so random and messed up. There’s something very appealing about the edginess of it. Love throws your neatly-ordered universe into turmoil without proper ‘management’. Life is too short to dedicate just one day to love someone…Remember, what you don’t have, you can’t give. Start loving Yourself first and there is never a late time for that..You can begin NOW!

Valentine’s day is NOT a day to express whether you truly love someone or not. It’s just an over hyped day that people are using wrongly for various personal reasons. If you love someone, there shouldn’t be limitations in expressing that.

To us as a couple, our Valentine is every day….If there are reasons for us to be happy, we bask in the euphoria. The days of sadness that sometimes do come and which are part of nature, we find the root cause of the problem and deal with it. After all, a problem shared is half solved.

For this year, and since our Valentine is every day, I and my husband already have activities mapped out for us and our cuties to explore one of the hidden treasures found in Lagos…and sorry, we aren’t telling anyone before it gets populated…lol!

Maymunah Kadri, Consultant Neuro-Psychiatrist & Psychotherapist MD/CEO, Pinnacle Medical Services Founder, SPEAKOUT INITIATIVE

LOVE…