My Valentine Dreams

Of thoughts and actions, of decisions and reflections, of paths and destinations, of desires and regrets. We look around and are led like slaves to our perceptions, answering to our limited understanding of the world we live in. Shaped by backgrounds or the refusal of same, unwillingly manipulated by circumstances that threaten, and in some cases succeed, in blurring our vision, redirecting our paths to destinations never dreamt of; realising when we get there things could have been different.

Why bother with the unknown? Why dwell on what could have been? Why waste emotions we could otherwise channel into profitability? We are incarcerated by our minds, by knowledge and the lack of it. We breed that which we end up fighting and we fight that which ought to make us strong. Things don't remain the same because we change them yet we are the ones who fight that change. It begins when we dwell on 'self'; my way or the highway and in the process sow a similar seed in others. Only that the same seed germinate differently in different soil types. We are all humans, we are not all the same. We are all equal, but that depends on our state of mind. It is rather difficult to see, why the path of peace cannot be common to all. The innate inability of man to dissociate from 'self' roots the varying perception of 'how things should be'.
It is sad but like one contemporary artist popularised 'it is what it is'. We are faced with a situation where we lead ourselves to a world devoid of love, of oneness, of peace. The men of faith pray along one line yet live on a parallel. The good Lord looks down on all and I can imagine a sad-faced emoticon on His blackberry if He used one - but He doesn't. He is too busy loving us for Him to be 'double-fingering' an inanimate object. Unlike His creation, us, that is supposed to be like Him. But we chose to use our free-will for self-gratification, in a quest to appear better than our fellow human for truly, equality is only in the mind. Except for a few though, like the one we celebrate today, St. Valentine.
Yes, our dear Valentine, Patron Saint of love. Love, not comparable to God's but suitable for our mutilation in gratifying our far from noble desires. Yet, like Valentine, we still have the few ones who uphold the truth in love, who by their selfless acts have shown that it is humanly possible to be detached from 'self' just to give life to a dead hope. Yes, they may not be saints, they will have their failings and weaknesses but, they have willingly sacrificed themselves as proof that love is always true, ever pure and persistently active in making life better for others for in this lies true wealth and fulfilment.
To attain this, to live this, to preach this, against all odds in a world that demands a searing of your conscience in order to 'be counted', is my Valentine dream. Will I live this dream? I pray I do and I know I can for "I can do all things, through Christ that strengthens me".
Happy Valentine everyone.

This anti-gay wahala sef

I used to listen to secular music a lot and one line from the 'Fugees' track has stuck in my memory like a brain cell, always ready to pop up when issues that bother on race, sexual orientation, equal rights come up. It says, 'Before black, I am first human'.
I have always been sensitive to perceived oppression and segregation. Maybe it is the result of growing up in a polygamous home, I really do not know and I will leave that to the 'psychos' to analyse. Even as a Christian, I have come to a stage in life where one must accept certain realities that have lived with us since time became measurable. One of these realities is that before anything else, before our gender, before the colour of our skin, before our race, before our faith, before religion, before sexual orientation, we are first HUMANS.
We cannot enjoy peace and harmony until we accept this reality in totality. Yes, some of us do accept that we are first humans, but see what happened to the world when some few people decided they were 'higher' or 'better' than other humans. We must accept equality for the right balance to exist in the world we live in today. My sexual orientation does not make me less of a human being or a better human being. If I have flaws, is it not a pointer that all humans are subject to flaws of one nature or the other. We have cross-dressers and transversites, no? We have people who derive pleasure from seeing other people suffer and die, no? We train people to become Psychiatrists, Pyschoanalysts and Psychologists and they in turn try to explain these flaws (within the limited scope of their knowledge) and try to recommend solutions and/or cures.
So, is it right to ban homosexuality and lesbianism? Yes. Should people with this challenge be castigated? No. There are cases of people who became straight after they realised that being gay was a flawed way of thinking and through therapy were able to correct this mentality. No one is born gay; it does not come with your DNA. Forget all the scientific babbles and mis-explanations, you are born straight as straight as can be. What gay people need is not segregation but loving correction just as you would correct a child that goes astray. Setting punitive measures for gay people is counter-productive in my honest opinion because the impression is that they are hated. What we are likely to get will be a revolt against the system and people living secret lives. The change we seek cannot be achieved by casting these people out. Let's start by treating them first as HUMANS, teach them to accept their thinking is flawed and through therapy, correct those that are willing to be corrected and those cases that prove stubborn or unwilling to change can then be made to face the law...but we as a people must first reach out in love.