Valentines During Trying Economic Times

By Dr Paula O.M.Otukile

Gaborone, Botswana

Worth Not­ing:

• The empha­sis of William Shake­speare on his son­net “Let Me Not To The Mar­riage Of The True Minds!” Tells is that love is not sup­posed to be con­di­tion­al and have a tim­ing of good times and best expe­ri­ences only but that love is sup­posed to be for­ev­er fixed mark.
• There is a lot of sad­ness because times are tough, unem­ploy­ment is rife and peo­ple are los­ing jobs, this dis­tress is reflect­ed by the imbal­ances which are more killings, sui­cide and the bit­ter­ness in trolls and com­ments in the social media. Some peo­ple are unhap­py but the fact that loves is com­mer­cial, it has put so much pres­sure in rela­tion­ships and those with­out resources suf­fer to the bit­ter end.

Love is an affec­tion­ate feel­ing towards a cer­tain indi­vid­ual who is spe­cial to some­one. To many it is a rare expe­ri­ence that occurs once in a while, and most of the time there is a chance of mate­r­i­al things as com­pared to love.

Ini­ti­a­tion schools to build a girl child and a boy child in Africa were impor­tant. The change is inevitable but dai­ly we are expe­ri­enc­ing the worst con­se­quences of change as love is com­mer­cial­ized and love is a com­mod­i­ty, the humil­i­ty is lim­it­ed in rela­tion­ships. In these try­ing times of hard eco­nom­ic times it does not work to be in a rela­tion­ship if one is not finan­cial­ly sta­ble.

It is safe to say that the mean­ing of love has decline in the new cen­tu­ry because love is more to do with mate­r­i­al things than a feel­ing. Moral decay is appar­ent and the fam­i­ly struc­ture holds less impor­tance to the youth, always on the elec­tron­ic gad­gets, at the times of learn­ing val­ues and love from par­ents.

The six­teenth cen­tu­ry writ­ers knew exact­ly what love was, the author and poet Christo­pher Mar­lowe had a beau­ti­ful poem named “The pas­sion­ate shep­herd to his love!” In this poem Mar­lowe out­lined beau­ti­ful­ly love with­out mate­r­i­al things. He called on to the lover to come and live with the beloved at the bush, by the rocks where they shall see shep­herds feed their flocks, an art of feed­ing oozed with love ges­ture as they shall be doing it togeth­er, the per­sona offered the girl a bed of ros­es, and the sim­plic­i­ty about the entire poem is the joy of being togeth­er and lack of mate­ri­als that are deemed to be the essence of the mod­ern love.

The esca­lat­ing of the Gen­der Based vio­lence issues is due to lost valu­able items and mon­ey spent by the young men and the old, because love is now com­mer­cial force.

The empha­sis of William Shake­speare on his son­net “Let Me Not To The Mar­riage Of The True Minds!” Tells is that love is not sup­posed to be con­di­tion­al and have a tim­ing of good times and best expe­ri­ences only but that love is sup­posed to be for­ev­er fixed mark.

There is a lot of sad­ness because times are tough, unem­ploy­ment is rife and peo­ple are los­ing jobs, this dis­tress is reflect­ed by the imbal­ances which are more killings, sui­cide and the bit­ter­ness in trolls and com­ments in the social media. Some peo­ple are unhap­py but the fact that loves is com­mer­cial, it has put so much pres­sure in rela­tion­ships and those with­out resources suf­fer to the bit­ter end.

There are a few peo­ple who do not care about resources and help from their part­ners but major­i­ty are sim­ply open to have a lux­u­ri­ous rela­tion­ship as com­pared to get­ting to know a per­son, grow­ing togeth­er and mak­ing a fam­i­ly with or with­out too much access to the tan­gi­bles.

In con­clu­sion to is safe to say Valentine’s Day bring a bit of fear to the ana­lysts as the cas­es of GBV might increase because there is a lot of moral decay which caus­es the young women to accept gifts from var­i­ous men, and to lack loy­al­ty in rela­tion­ships.

There is a seri­ous decline to moral­i­ty in terms of no one own a woman or girl­friend there­fore it is wise to leave qui­et­ly when one feels the lady is no longer respect­ful or shar­ing a mutu­al under­stand­ing of love to him. Hope is ris­ing that the new­ly appoint­ed reg­is­ter for the sex­u­al offend­ers shall help reduce this bur­den in South Africa.

The activism for human rights issues is also affect­ed as the NGO’s in Africa depend­ed more in USAID ini­tia­tive funds and PEPFAR. How­ev­er hope is not lost, as the ser­vants of hope it is impor­tant to be opti­mistic that things shall turn bet­ter as time unfolds.