Love is a tough call

That’s the unlikeliest truest truth I have heard this year. Love is a tough call. Or, to go all the way, love is the toughest call. Very many are called, very few are chosen, very fewer are loved.

Love is not an easy thing, to give or to receive. Sometimes, the receiver doesn’t need it or gets it but suffers in the process. Love is not a straight thing, at all. Love has too many ups and downs.

Love has too many highs and lows. Love has too many bending corners, as we say in Nigeria. Love has too much anxiety: oh, the heartbreaks of love. Love has too much sugar: oh, the diabetes of love.

Love has too many uncertainties. Love has too much uncertainty. You take right, you hit a dead end, you take left, magic happens. Almost as if love is not cast in concrete.

You can and should love who hates you since you only give what you have. If love should not love hate, who would? If love should hate hate, what would hate do to love or to self: love? Can love hate and can hate love?

Love can hurt you, though. Love can mess you up, terminally. Love can kill you so since they say love is blind, you should always love with at least one eye open. Love should be permanently smart and wise.

Love is a clean something that can throw up much dirt. Love is light that can suffer occasional eclipse because of the forever jealousy of darkness. Love can enjoy the rain when all it needs is sunshine. Registrar of Michael BUSH Mentoring Academy, Mr Idongesit Nnah, paraphrased me beautifully when he wrote that just like kindness, “love na spiritual sumtin”.

Alas, love is not love until you love someone with blemish or scar, someone clearly not good enough or for anything, someone so poor or rejected, someone thought non-aligned or ugly, someone lower or worse than you. Love is not love until you love to the very end. Love is not when the bed is laid. Love is when there’s overwhelming evidence to not love.

Which brings me to the reaction of one reader after reading the foregoing as a teaser on Facebook. Anne Udoh of Uyo City Hikers wrote: “The Boss, I disagree when you say we should love who hates us. Theoritically, it is possible to ‘’love’’ who hates you but practically, it is both impossible and foolhardy. As much as possible, I distance myself from people who have left me with no iota of doubt that they do not like me as I don’t want to wait for the hatred to mature”.

Dear Hiker Udoh, love is a strange thing. Love is not love when love loves love. Love is love only when love loves hate. The Master made that clear 2023 years ago and that remains clear to this day and shall remain so for eternity.

You mentioned someone who likes you, please who is that? How and when do you say someone likes you? At the beginning or in the middle or at the end of your relationship? If you arrived at that hasty conclusion because of how such a one smiles at or talks so fondly of or always helps you, are you sure it would end well?

What if they are only waiting for the opportune time to strike? What if they are just busy gathering the arsenal with which to overrun your city (no pun intended, Dear Manchester City Football Club)! What if that so-called hater is your real lover and vice versa? What if there’s a dagger or two in all that smile?

When you love the rich, it is love but it is not love. Love is love when you love someone who is incapable; eg. someone incapable of love, someone incapable of buying, someone incapable of giving. Love is love when you die for people not worth dying for; people who hate you even in death. You know the greatest Lover who ever lived, don’t you?

Furthermore, love can also be a horrendous virus. Love knows no age, no gender, no limits, no race, no religion; no nothing. An underaged person can couple up with their grannie and vice versa and the world won’t end. Love can drive against traffic and neither the law nor humanity would stop or punish it.

Fortunately, love evinces no variableness. Love does not change, it does not increase, it does not decrease. Love is not swayed by love or hate or selfishness or offence or anything at all. Love is not one to one, love is one to all!

Love is not accounting: never keeps records, never audits or queries, never balances account. Love is not business: never takes stock, never greedily counts losses or selfishly plots scarcity, never profitcentric. Love is not football: never competes, never stylish or desperate for results, never worse off. Love is not mathematics: never adds, never divides or fractionises, never subtracts.

Love never boasts, love is ever humble. Love never complains, love is ever content. Love never regrets, love is ever sure-footed. Love never expires, love is ever all-weather.

Love never gives up. Love never reconciles with hate because that would make them mates. Love never mates with hate. Love never forgets itself no matter how maliciously hate vibes.

Love abides, in spite of hate. Love comforts those worsted by hate. Love empathises with those panel beaten by hate. Love serenades those seized by hate.

Love is an agent; love is a multifunctional agent. Love is the answer; love is the final answer. Love is powerful; love is all-powerful. Love is rich; love is wealthy.

Love waits it out. Love and time are five and six. Love is a travel, a journey to the very end of time and man. Love is not only Man Friday, love is the last man standing; to and beyond the end.

Love is a constant, a given; love is the goal. Love is love, all by itself; love is forever. Love is, general, generic; love is ubiquitous. Love is supreme, almighty; love is the it.

These intrinsic qualities make love the toughest call ever. Do you know at least one man alive who loves this way? Of course, you don’t because love is not a man and man is not love, but you could start the walk yourself today so you can tomorrow point to this light. Love is a process; love is work in progress.

Thank You, Jesus, for showing the way. You are love and love is You. You never fail, you never hate. I love You, Lord!

God bless Nigeria!

NYSC: Where’s the love?

Senator Adams Oshiomhole, last week, threw Nigeria under the bus yet again, for very good reasons. He indirectly proved that the change of nomenclature from prison to correctional centre is simply a whitewash. Nigerian human beings across correctional centres are fed with littler cost than Nigerian dogs in the same system.

I have always loved the Edo State former governor, right from his public genesis as president of Nigeria Labour Congress. It’s great to see that he’s gingering the Godswill Akpabio-led Senate with what remains of his aluta continua horsepower. However, we should not scapegoat our correctional centres because treating our animals better than the citizens far transcends them.

In fact, from the Presidency through the national legislature and judiciary as well as allied subnational strata all the way down to the third tier and even the citizens ourselves, the Nigerian man or woman, boy or girl or child is nothing. Take a walk today to our schools and campuses and hospitals and roads and markets and such other public infrastructure. Everyone is double-dealing; almost as if we are all sure that Nigeria won’t work so we are busy grabbing what we can when we can.

Imagine corps members, our very own children, called up by Nigeria, kidnapped by Nigerians while on their way to obey that call on 7th August 2023 but totally abandoned and forgotten by Nigeria. We are a joke, I swear. How can Nigeria ever satisfactorily reassure let alone convincingly win back these youngsters?

I am too ashamed to point the finger. I mean, if governments have been too busy, what about we the people, what about me? No, we all kept away hitherto because, I mean, they are not directly related to us.

Yet, we call ourselves patriots and lovers of Nigeria. Patriots and lovers, my foot. Where’s the lie?

And, where’s the love? Imagine those innocent children as ours as indeed they are. Do we honestly expect them -when they survive this ordeal complete with the national betrayal- to ever treat this country with love and respect?

Dear Nigeria, allow Nigerians to breathe. Show the masses some love. Only a citizenry who have been honoured with love would emerge as patriots.

Nigeria should kill and bury impunity and self-help before the twin evils finish off Nigerians. Fighting corruption but looking away from it when it concerns the poor is the easiest way to deepen or spread it. Get those corps members out today, dear powers-that-be, and whatever it takes -going forward- please protect our children, our people and our infrastructure!