Those who bear the name Valentine dread the month of February like a plague. Besides close friends who always demand that you celebrate your name in grand style, most confront you with all manner of questions bordering on the concept your name is supposed to embody. Thus, you are asked whether you were born on the 14th of February or whether you were a by-product of a love affair that took place in the month of February. One fact I have come to discover over the years is that people consider those who bear the name Valentine as experts in all known techniques of love, from its fundamentals to its metaphysics.
Despite much research, we cannot say unarguably the exact date the feast started, nor by what route it entered into history. Perhaps it is connected to the life of a certain St Valentine, who was said to have suffered martyrdom in Rome, as Church hagiography would have us believe. Perhaps, as the legend of the saint’s heroic faith suggests, it grew out of the love shown to prisoners by the saintly Valentine. Perhaps it has to do with the period in the year when birds of the earth look for mates. Perhaps it is another case of the substitution of a pagan feast by a Christian feast as a subtle way of blighting paganism at the bud. We do not know. Valentine’s Day is part of history, whose beginning has been forgotten and whose end we shall never reach.
The popularity of Valentine’s Day could be linked to the nature of the theme it celebrates – love. Writing about love, Archbishop Fulton Sheen called it “the most used and the most misunderstood word.” The misunderstanding inherent in the nature of love often provokes people to ask questions such as: How much of what we claim as love is love indeed? Does love have different levels and spheres? Is it possible to love our neighbour as ourselves, as the Holy Writ prescribes? What is love? These are the questions with which the most comprehensive theories, treatises, and analyses of love find it necessary to begin.
To the Greeks, love could be Eros, Philia, or Agape. Plato’s Ladder of Love in the Symposium has different loves for its rungs, up to what we commonly call Platonic Love. St Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between love in the sphere of passion and love as an act of will. The former he assigns to what he calls the “concupiscible faculty” of the sensitive appetite; the latter, to the rational or “intellectual appetite.” Sometimes, people talk about metaphysical, contemplative, material, and acquisitive love, among others.
Whatever form love takes, it implies a complex psychical experience of strong attraction to, intense desire for, vivid appreciation of, and a profound interest in one’s object of love. The object of love could be a fellow being, an institution, a cause, or even nature. It involves tender affection, sympathetic understanding, admiration, and loyalty in reference to its object.
But apart from a few people who recognize the plurality of love in their analyses, most of us, especially the youth, talk abundantly of love, commonly in the sense of amorous appetite. These are people who confess their love for the object of their affection more than for their own mothers. Our elders consider this form of love to be a kind of “possession” or “madness” and would frown at anyone who proposes it as a fit guide in the choice of a marriage partner. They do this knowing that once the erotic side of love diminishes or fades away altogether, the disinterested element fades too; interest in the other’s happiness evaporates, all tender feeling is eroded, and the one desire is to get away. This is what Lucretius called “erotic befuddlement,” what Diderot derisively described as “the voluptuous loss of a few drops of liquid.” It is a spark thrown off by the contact or nearness of two opposite bodies.
In pursuit of this type of love, there is nothing that human beings have not done, or are not capable of doing. The love potion that some ladies brew for men they suspect of unrequited love has no platonic aim. It is not out of generosity but rather to secure the object of their longing. Men spend vast amounts of money wooing women, and women themselves do as much. To attract men, they dress in ways designed to arouse precipitate passion. Eyelashes are darkened with gum ammonia. Cheeks and lips are painted with sticks of minium or alkanet roots. Adjustable eyebrows are used and often pencilled with lampblack or pulverised sulphuret of antimony; sometimes they are thinned into diverse shapes or shaved off entirely and painted as “crescent moons” or other forms. Eyelids are shaded with kohl. All sorts of things are rubbed on the face in the hope of enhancing beauty. Some wrap their fingernails overnight with henna leaves to make them purple. Padded brassieres are used to make the breasts appear poised and … There is no part of the woman’s body, in pursuit of men, that has not been perfected, decorated, refined, stretched, squeezed, bleached, reformed, compacted, or shortened.
Have you heard about Suleiman the Magnificent? While at the apogee of his glory, he had many concubines. During his daily evening walks around his compound, his women would line up along the paths he would take. Usually, Suleiman would examine them like a man inspecting dogs in kennels. He would hand a white kerchief to any woman who attracted him on a particular day. That night, the recipient of the kerchief would return it. This was his method of pursuing amorous satisfaction.
Higher than the aforementioned form of love is what is often called genuine friendship. In this type of love, altruistic motives predominate. It springs from mutual admiration. Here, love is thought to precede desire and to determine its wishes. Marriages built upon this type of love are often successful. Mature lovers discover that marriage transcends the act of procreation or the fantasy of sexual acts. There are some men who think that all a woman appreciates in a man is his ability to brandish the erectile organ to her satisfaction. No. Marriage is more than that. It demands deep understanding and maturity from both partners.
All the foregoing classifications and distinctions—exhaustive though they may seem—belong to the theory of human love. But the diversity of love extends to the Christian understanding of it. Christianity brought about a fundamental shift in man’s thinking about love. Christianity does not see love in terms of emotion or passion but rather in the infinite perfection and creativity of God. God Himself is love (1 John 4:4). “Love ye one another.” In this profound sentence, God summarised all the commandments. Love rules the world and was, perhaps, as Parmenides thought, “the very first thing created by the gods to rule the world.”
The key to peace in the world is for men to embrace the ethics of Christ—love. Confucius taught a version of it in his rule of reciprocity (the Golden Rule). Immanuel Kant espoused it in The Metaphysics of Morals through what he called the “Maxims of Categorical Imperatives.” All great religions teach it. Until we begin to imbibe this Golden Rule (love), the battle to remake the world might as well be labelled a utopia.
The sooner we use Valentine’s Day to promote this kind of love, the better the world will become. Here we are again, celebrating another Valentine’s Day. How do we make it serve the purpose of making the world a better place? This is the central question. In the first place, we must see Valentine Day as a time for love and service to humanity because the greatest love is that which is expressed through sacrifice for one another.
Therefore, we must as a country and children of God, decry the increasing culture of self-interest and materialism in Nigeria which has exacerbated poverty and hardship. We must openly reject relentless pursuit of wealth at the expense of the common good, because true national progress can only be achieved when both leaders and citizens embrace love through service, compassion and shared prosperity. Lastly, we must encourage fellow Nigerians to demonstrate love in impartial ways, particularly by investing in education and healthcare- two critical pillars of national growth and development.