The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.

Love is a paradox, life is a serialized dying experience and lose some, win some is the game of life. That is the summary of human engagement on earth. The agony comes when we want to will our fantasy into reality.

Falling in love can be the most thrilling experience indulged by any mortal, and getting out of love can be the most devastating exercise.

On this series, I reflect on the most memorable moments I have been flattered with but regret the trying period I had to move on.

How often do we claim to love someone and soonest we harbour so much disgust.

How easily are we blown off by the tide of immediacy promising tomorrow and its challenges unborn? However, when a new day dawns we are faced with options of standing by our words and backtracking into the lane of natural instinct: self-preservation and will to survive before any other considerations.

Love is a paradox, in that in our ability to love passionately lies an equal tendency to hate irrationally. This is an extension of the inherent dynamic all ideas. That born with an idea is an antithesis, sure to manifest and kill off that idea.

When I profess, my love today it is not a blanket assurance I cannot turn tables tomorrow—this is as natural to man as bowel moment!

That is why that knight in charming armour today may become your worst night mare tomorrow.

…to be continued!

[Sorry, I just have to post this piece unfinished]

Not a Valentino!

It’s funny how time flies and reasoning rust. This month there would be another global celebration of the festival of love. And to be expected are the ripple effects of such activity: broken hearts, pockets and hymens! Well, some reverence that day as to go to any length to satisfy their object of love.

Of course, I was once in that shoe for sincerely positive reasons. I loved with all my heart turned to it and blinded against reasoning. But, it took the goodwill of some few ladies to show me the light of my salvation.

Once upon a time, when men were boys such is the feeling I have now. There was a time the approach of this month gives me great trepidation. How am I to live up to expectation?

The first VAL I celebrated was with a gift of an apple—that was for my first love. Oh, how naivety can be so splendid! She appreciated it and winked at me for a comm’on! I asked her out on the spot!

The last one, I gave a cake, custom-made card, Jewellery and other accessories summed into thirteen thousand naira—that was on campus, at the height of my stupidity!—I pray, such insanity will never hit me again. The next day we had a picnic at the botanical garden where some doles dropped off my pocket still. Funny enough she never thought it wise to come along with a portion of the muffin to celebrate our love. Fatally brutal!

My last girl was brutally disappointed, too. I gave her a bottle of Viju Milk!

For several weeks, she became reverent doing everything to enter my good books. Went extra miles on every errands and rounds and I could not but thanked my stars for such unmerited benevolence!

On the D-day I gave every excuse to be out-of-sight and she conspired to let me be thinking it would give me room to run the errand of valentine…it must have ached so much being the only girl in her room not to declare good returns for her roommates on that night. Well, I have learnt my lessons.

Some weeks later we quarrelled and the VALs was top on the reasons for it

‘Imagine, you couldn’t make me happy on Val’s day!’ she complained

‘Neither could you make me happy, too’ I fired back

‘Relationship is a two-way traffic, I give you; you give me, makes the world go round’ I added

Upon my wretched bottle of Viju milk, I did not get a pack of groundnut! Pathetic!

On a point of talk: what really gives ladies impressions that the guys should bend over their backs to make them happy on VAL’s day? And who ever gave them the impression that the only giftable for a guy is singlet—such is what I ever got?

Yesterday, my new girlfriend accused me of not wanting to celebrate the Val for her as an explanation for my nonchalant attitude lately! Only if she knows…