Be My Valentine

By Kodwo BRUMPON

“The quarrel of lovers is the renewal of love.” – African proverb

Valentine is around the corner and our airwaves as usual are filled with tweets and jingles of the commodified version of love, appropriated for self-gratification to make the day a transactional event.

Whilst it is important for all of us to express our affections for our partners, the drama of encouraging such expressions by the quality of gifts, lavish dates, and other consumer experiences has significantly reduced love to the narrow standard of our ability to spend and impress.

As a result, the intimate, authentic dimensions of love, such as vulnerability, kindness, humility, charity and others, have been overshadowed by an emphasis on external, often superficial, markers of affection.

But in an era where the ‘individual self’ has become the primary unit of value, and personal achievement and gratification has taken precedence over the communal well-being, we can understand why the wellspring of selfless care, compassion, and the greatest force for good can be reduced to a commodity that serves personal wills and desires.

We have and continue to efficiently market love as a product to consume, not a virtue to cultivate. This revolution is neither accidental nor isolated; rather, it is a well-orchestrated economic imperative that has harnessed evolving cultural conditioning to make the most out of an opportunity.

The rise of secularisation made it trendier for modernity to project the self as the ultimate authority. This empowered individuals to downplay selflessness and thus, reduce the communal and self-giving attitudes from our everyday interactions. In that context love was re-interpreted as a ‘good’ that one should seek for him or herself. Coupled with the emergence of emotional intelligence, our appreciation of love as a divine anchor devalued and its scriptural virtues were replaced with fleeting passions. It allowed us to say, we need to love ourselves first before we can really follow the theological command of “love your neighbour as yourself.”

Since the transformation prioritised convenience over commitment, it became easier for the masses to fall for it. Afterall, the easy way always feels like the highway. And the freedom to interpret love as something that one could possess, control, or trade in the marketplace of emotions, contributes to making the individual powerful.

Once that happened, we had the power to use external validations to mask our vulnerabilities and insecurities. And this allows us to drown the once association of depth and fidelity, for instant gratification and curated personas. Interestingly, the self-gratification is leaving many of us empty and the cry for authentic love is resounding across the world.

Thus, this year, we all need to strive to re-interpret Valentine’s Day in its authenticity. We need to shift the conversation from transactional romance to transformative connection. We should resist the commodification of love and seek meaningful and fulfilling connections that energized our relationships on a deeper level.

Yes, we cannot do away with the gifts and celebrations, but we can also include acts of service, and expressions of gratitude that reflects kindness, generosity, and selflessness. Let us also celebrate it as a day when we forgive grudges, and seek the dignity of others.

We can reinterpret the consumer culture “Be-my-Valentine” as a time for encouraging individuals to embrace their true selves to dismantle the dependency on external validation. We should focus on creating relationships based on genuine understanding rather than idealised projections.

It is time to let the authentic meaning of love to float to the surface. We must teach ourselves that love is not a feeling but a choice to serve and lay down our lives for another. So, instead of looking forward to what you can get, ask yourself what you can give for others to flourish in life.

We have been romanticizing love in an incomplete for too long. This time round, let us make it beautiful by being wonderful individuals. Let us celebrate the love of our families and friendships, and not just couples.

Let us stand against tyranny by advocating for justice and equality. Altogether, let us celebrate love as an act of selfless service, a commitment to the well-being of others, and a continuous process of mutual growth. In this way, we would shift our focus from material expressions to meaningful interactions, and our humanity would be better off…

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Kodwo Brumpon is an executive coach at Polygon Oval, a forward-thinking Pan African management consultancy and social impact firm driven by data analytics, with a focus on understanding the extraordinary potential and needs of organisations and businesses to help them cultivate synergies, that catapults into their strategic growth, and certifies their sustainability.

Comments, suggestions, and requests for talks and training should be sent to him at [email protected]

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