Love With Eyes Open

Today Saturday 10TH December 2911, I just got a message from my friend who resides in LEKKI, a sprawling and elitist area of LAGOS CITY that a young girl was killed by her boyfriend because of jealousy. The boyfriend alleged that she was given the latest Blackberry Bold phone by an admirer who probably she was encouraging or had started dating. His reasoning is that no man gives a pretty girl such gift as Christmas present if there is nothing going on between them. That set me thinking. What is LOVE by the way? The Oxford Advanced Learners dictionary defined it as having strong feelings of affection for somebody. It is to care for someone especially in a way that is based on strong affection and a feeling of wanting to protect them rather than sex. To me, LOVE is being very fond of the person that you are willing to sacrifice all to make the person happy. So why would you have this strong feelings for someone and be willing to do so much for the person's happiness and comfort and suddenly turn to be the killer? Where and when did the strong and deep affection become muderous? They say LOVE is blind but I tell you it is not blind. The guy that will kill you will start from day one of dating to show you the signs. But most times, the other half ignores it. When we were in the University, a roommate was in such relationship and everytime we advised her, she would say that he would change. SHe would say that its because he loved her so much that he did not want to see people admiring me. Her excuses were so lame and stupid. Well we left her until the guy sent her to the Specialist Hospital in town for 3 weeks. This is because the school Medical Center did not have the facility to treat her again. The guy was possessive and suspicious of her every move. Even we her roommates were not trusted. If he came into the room and saw other guy talking to us, he would quickly called her out for questioning. At a point they became the butt of jokes on campus but that did not stop the guy. We always knew from raised voices because she would keep quiet about it. Some will call this love but it was not as far as we were concerned. Years later, she regretted being beaten and being stupid. I read a book by Praise George titled

LOVE IS NOT BLIND

. He stated there that

LOVE is the connection you have with the very essence of your partner. It has nothing to do with how good looking a person is or how successful or rich the person is. Love has to do with the character qualities of the person

See when we are stripped down to our innermost selves, what remains are our character traits. its these character traits that people should fall in love with but most times, the physical attributes that would soon fade are the things that we fall in love with. Like the writer stated in his book,

we stumble through a maze of external qualities and material enticements only to discover that what truly matters in a person, what really counts is inside the soul of that person.

Unfortunately, this young girl was not lucky as our roommate. She died today. It so sad that her life was cut short suddenly by a jealous, possessive maniac of a boyfriend. The man that pledged undying love to her is the same person that killed her. May her soul rest in perfect peace.