In the name of love
Bongi D D M Radipati | Monday February 16, 2026 16:25
In fact, they are deliberate exaggerations solely intended to give emphasis. Second, although the expressions are now considered clichés because they have long been overused and are everywhere, nonetheless, they still convey a basic truth. This truth is that love is a set of intense emotions, behaviors, and experiences that border on attachment, deep affection, care, commitment, and sacrifice by one for another. Third, because love is an emotion of one person for another, it is necessarily and intrinsically a risk, not a guarantee. No matter what we do to convey it, or how we express it to the one we love, there is absolutely no guarantee that our love for another may foil betrayal, or be reciprocated or permanent.
If the sweet story about the date of February 14 being celebrated as a day of love in honor of Saint Valentine is true, then his assumed death for love was laudatory and worthy of emulation. Similarly, if Geoffrey Chaucer’s writings on romantic love in the 14th century are the reason why we perceive this date as a time for romance, all the more reason we should celebrate the day and its significance as often as we can. In an age when we are likely to wage both peace and war concurrently and sometimes consecutively, if the month of February is recognized globally as a month for love, for the simple reason that where love abounds there can be no war, then, I reckon that, we need more than one February in a year. In fact, if, from time to time, we could pull back the curtain on humanity’s basic instinct for love, we may be able to expose and consequently retain love’s allure, at all times.
Over the years, different portrayals of love have captured its different facets. They have captured love’s joy, transformation, accommodation, and its tension, all of which are based on the foundational principle of individual free will and autonomy. Whether in fine art (paintings, sculptures, drama, photography, etc), literature, textbooks, and discussions, love is typically depicted as not just a state of bliss and fulfillment but also as a dynamic emotion involving passion, care, consideration, risk, and hope. Maybe for our time, Auguste Rodin’s sculpture “The Kiss” (1882) is the best portrayal of the mutual yielding, intimacy, vulnerability and physicality of two lovers embracing each other in love yet foreshadowed by the reality of their individual human forms and choices. Were it to be discerned this way, “The Kiss” sculpture would help to unify us in a belief that anything less than love is perfidious to us and that our quest and desire for love are righteous.
This notwithstanding, when we are in love, we are always faced with a conundrum. On the one hand, we are certain that, more than anybody else, we know the one we love. On the other hand, the one we love is always a mystery to us because we love them. Now, philosophically, and certainly through the existentialist viewpoint of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, it is precisely when we love someone that we discover that we actually do not know them. One might bristle at what all this means to us. So, let us attempt to explain it in more understandable ways.
From the moment we decide or realize or feel that we love someone, that is the moment we want their entire being and their freedom and choice to be completely and utterly focused on us. From that moment, each time we experience the freedom and choice of the one we love, especially if it is contrary to what we like or prefer or are used to, do we realize that we really do not know them, let alone possess them. We then have to accept that the one we love remains an autonomous and unpredictable individual, forever beyond our grasp. This is so just as it is in “The Kiss” sculpture. Notwithstanding the physical closeness of the sculptural lovers, factually, symbolically and imaginatively, they still remain separate individuals.
It has long been admitted that being in love has several benefits to the one who harbors love for another. Interestingly, these benefits extend even to the one who is being loved, whether or not they do something about that love. In any case, the opportunity and ability to love another person, as deeply and unselfishly as love demands, both create depth and meaning to any lover’s life. In the name of love, we find it easy to do everything or are willing to be everything, for the one we love. Indeed, for love, we can forgive, sacrifice, and do extraordinary acts of care for another. This implies that for love, typically, our conduct is actuated by our highest and most selfless emotional impulses. This renders us at that particular moment at least, to be one of the most ethical individuals around. Yet when our emotional impulses are driven by insecurity or wish to control, our love impulses will be false because they will be used to justify our control, possession, or manipulation of another. Doing this will not be love, for the same reason that our country’s apparent propensity for gender based violence can never be justified on love. Rather, both conduct and their notions are as ludicrous and intolerable as they are a shameless bastardization of love.
It may be that for the risk inherent in loving someone, we could be inclined to be more cautious or hedge our bets against loving them. It may even be that ironically when we love someone, there is an occasional decrease in our own happiness because of how the one we love reacts to our love for them at a particular moment of our lives together. But, the love we have for someone means that our choice or inclination to love them has value beyond and above whatever response or effects that love may generate. This suggests that there is more to love than just pursuing one’s own personal fulfillment or actualization. Loving someone, even against the risk inherent in it; even against the inevitable loss of pleasure in a simple day to day sense; and even against expectation or logic, is good for us. Why? Because it gives the lover meaning, purpose and yes, satisfaction, in their own lives, irrespective of how it may be received by the one who is being loved. Therefore, because love is good for us as it is good for those we love, let each one of us commit this year to love and to do so cheerfully. Let us put the two cliché - longing for love with every fiber of our bodies, and desiring another person with our whole heart and mind - to the test. Perhaps doing so may alleviate the strains and struggles of contemporary life. Perhaps it may halt our quest for love in the wrong places or for wrong reasons. Perhaps it may help to declare a truce in the zero-sum battle over who deserves who in our personal relationships. The quest for affection is always one worthy of our effort.
*Radipati is a regular Mmegi contributor