Valentine's Day. And tomorrow a wedding. What I do not understand is the big fuss everyone makes over Valentine's Day. Stores raise their prices and create an artificial scarcity for goods that would be in great demand, such as toys, flowers, and candies. But does this really mean that the world recognises this day as a day when you celebrate your supposed love or lust for someone?

    Considering the culture and the circumstances, people have come to truly and sincerely believe that love can be found in receiving toys, flowers, and candies; or replacing lovers like one replaces tires for their car. Replace them until you sort of think you like what they give. Taking things is not love, that is greed.

    Love is a forgotten trait in this day and age. Love has been superseded by lust, and everyone thinks that the feelings of lust already constitutes love. And that is why people "fall out" of love often, and make breaking hearts look so easy. Because they never knew what love is.

    Love requires one to give without expecting anything in return. To forgive without expecting to be forgiven. To be patient when the other has no patience. To be kind when the other will only hurt. To remain loyal when they are not. To care when they do not. To be compassionate when they are not. To remember when they forget. To remain when they move away. That is love, and love is not easy. It never was, and it never will be.

    It is undoubted that human beings are all over the Earth; it is unlikely that any portion of the surface has yet remained unseen by human eyes from any civilization. Humans are fond of exploring the unknown, finding out what lies beyond the horizon, generally we are curious. The second foundation I want to make is that humans are fearful creatures. We fear that which we do not know, and we shrink away from what is unfamiliar; which is why we pursue these things with great passion by celebrating those who perform extraordinary acts, such as Christopher Columbus, Magellan, Francis Drake, and many others.

    However, such acts of bravery are rare in the twenty-first century. I do not mean the chest-pumping, foolish, and audacious bravado that is so often mistaken for bravery by those who know less, but rather the actual act of overcoming fear to do something relevant to the self or to society is, and always has been quite rare.

     A bit over a year ago, I promised to someone’s mother on her deathbed that I would do what I could to take care of their child. And I did my best to keep that promise. Due to unforeseen circumstances, a little less than a year after the mother died, I was stopped and was told that I ought to stop keeping that promise, because the mother is dead anyway and the dead will never know whether the promise was kept or not. Does the promise to someone who will not be around to check less binding of a promise to someone who will be?

    A promise is a promise, regardless of the circumstances. My yes is a yes, and my no is a no. I keep my promises, whether to the living or to the dead, to the best of my abilities, because promises have meaning that should not be redefined on a whim. Who we are as a person is defined by our words, actions, thoughts, what we believe in and every little thing about us. These mean nothing when they are separated and examined alone, and should be taken together. A man’s word is rarely sufficient today, as most people keep up some sort of façade to protect themselves. The man’s actions ought to match what the words are saying, otherwise his words will become meaningless.

    Science. We hear the word tossed around today when people attempt to justify certain decisions that they themselves can only defend with weak explanations: ‘Science says it’s natural,’ or ‘Science says it’s possible,’ or ‘Science says it doesn’t exist’. Humans have this tendency to believe anything that they can sense with their traditional five senses; to claim that we have any more is basically saying that Aristotle, the guy who practically invented the science of ‘smartness’, was wrong. I am kidding, but do you see the point I am trying to make? Science, while a wonderful thing, has learned much since the days of the Greeks and their togas.

    While I am no physicist or chemist, most objective science has to do with the measurement, calculation and repetition of things to prove that something follows this or that law. And such things are often times considered to be real. If something cannot be measured, calculated, and subjected to repetition, should science still be used to gauge the reality of such a thing? Some may be familiar with the story of a young boy who questioned the existence of his teacher’s brain because it could neither be felt, seen, tasted, nor smelt. And yet, the teacher insists that the brain exists, despite the fact that it could not be handed over to the boy to be subjected to experimentation. How does this then relate to other things that occur inside our bodies?

    Throughout our lives, we will be put into certain situations that would make our usual dealings with other people far more interesting than normal. It could be that will display that they are possession of remarkable intellect, or reveal the rather unsurprising lack of it. If there is one thing constant about people, it is that people are imperfect and they will constantly impress us in one way or another. Though, this is less true for those whom we have gotten to know better over the passing of time.

    Throughout our lives, every now and again, life will manage to figure out a magnificent way of punching us in the stomach, sending us reeling into a vicious cycle of self-pity and mourning. And we call that ‘failure’. Failure is not something that stems from the lack of success in our endeavours, or from a lack of bravado. Failure comes when our goals do not meet reality.

    The world has multiple definitions of failure; when your grades do not meet the cut, when you do not meet your quota, when you do not meet your obligations for one reason or another, when you lose someone you love, when friendships fall apart. Anything that does not go according to plan can be written off as a failure.

    At this point in time, there are a group of young people who are between the ages of 14 to 33. One thing characterizes this group of people, they are all young and they are all in pursuit of comfort and success. But they also have one thing in common: they all believe themselves to be the hero of the story of their own lives.

    A particular girl from this group of people was named Anna, and she seemed to be comfortable and enjoyed life and its small pleasures. However, deep down inside, Anna was unhappy. She was disappointed with her life, why?

The past week has been pretty busy and I apologise for the delayed post.

    A year is divided into three hundred sixty-five days, and each day is divided into twenty-four hours, and every hour into sixty minutes. We live in a world that goes by too fast, too quickly. An average person would live their life; get to know a handful of people if any, and at the appointed time, will die. And after a few years, no one will remember them. Is that all our life is going to be, a small and insignificant point in the grand scheme of eternity?

    People often wonder what their lives are going to amount to. Think about this: a virtuoso spends over fourteen thousand and six hundred hours practicing their instrument of choice, be it a piano, violin, a flute; or four hours of practice daily for a decade, and that continues until the day they can no longer play. We often wonder how such people find time to do such things, and the answer to that question is another question, I believe: what does your time go into in the first place?

    I begin again with a statement regarding the last few weeks. In the last few weeks, eight persons within two degrees of relationship of myself have died: six of them I spoke with at least once, two of them related to a friend.  Not once did I not feel this tightness in my chest that reminded me of what it is to be alive, to feel pain in the loss of life.

    When I say pain, I do not mean physical pain. Physical pain is less common and easy to bear; instead, I refer to mental pain, or what people enjoy calling emotional pain. This sort of pain is far less dramatic than physical pain, and is far more common far more difficult to bear. Humans are prone to attempts to conceal such pain, with the dismissive "I'm fine, thank you" or the "I'm okay." Concealing such pain increases the burden, and yet it is easier to say "My back hurts" or "my head hurts" than it is to say 'my heart is broken.'

    I had the opportunity to spend some time with a friend in one of the recent evenings of July, and as we spoke at length about several subjects, and I came to the conclusion that she was not doing so well. On the outside, she looks good, she smiles and laughs at all sorts of things. By appearances, she does well. But, if you enjoy reading body language and word use, one would recognise that she isn't actually really well.  When everyone disappears, I wonder what is left in her head and heart.

    One of the many things we spoke about was the people we surrounded ourselves with. She has her own set of friends and family, I have my own, and we have few people in common. One thing I noticed was that she was often put down by her family and her friends were no more encouraging. Some of them even brought her down to share in their misery, when she had no part of it. That, among other things.