Volume 65 December 2026-January 2026 : Reality Hub

May I dare to remember or possibly cause you to recall the days when grammatically horrendous love letters reached your post… (See how you smile?). You would stand under a tree with a potential lover and shyly prune the leaves off the poor Mophane tree as words of love melted your heart, and drew circles with your feet on the soil. Mind you, the words will still resound in your head when your better half wakes up beside you in your balding and greying years.

The days when cellphones and cars meant nothing and running barefoot on stormy nights and in the scorching heat just to meet the one you love at the river was something special.  Seeing that I may not have been born in those days you may wonder how I knew all these things….well let`s just say good news travels fast and good things tend to leave a lasting impression…. So allow me if you may, to say “Hello: Old fashioned love…goodbye modern love”.

In those days, a possible admirer would promise you the stars and the moon….and I`m pretty sure if he could afford it, he would even build a railroad just by your house together with the train itself. I wouldn`t put it in the category of ‘lies` said to just get the girl to say ‘yes` … I believe it was the thought that counted…the richness of the heart…not the amount of money in the pocket. Old fashioned love seemed to have provision for authenticity alone and everything else besides that seemed abstract.  Even in arranged marriages or alliances of any sort, one learned to love the other person. Looks never really mattered, the heart rarely had too much love to offer to different people, and it hardly fell out of love after falling in love. Old fashioned love was somewhat predictable, things only got better with time. Disputes were settled behind closed doors and family intervened, I think it`s safe to say old fashioned love truly stood the test of time.

Oh of course with civilisation and modernisation a lot of things have been made convenient, I`m not disputing altogether the  conveniences  brought about by social networks and the fact that fast engines have brought in style, comfort and convenience which I greatly applaud.  And oh!  Not to forget the cellphones….don‘t get me talking about cellphones because I could spend the whole day. But sadly at the same time with the emergence of technology, the essence of ‘Effort` when it comes to according love in various respects has gone down with the birth of various innovations in these modern times.  Don`t misunderstand me. I`m not anti-change; I`m just tempted to ponder on the old fashioned kinda` love. Don`t judge me.

Speaking of effort, in these modern times, with just a click of a button the same Christmas message can be sent and forwarded to all your loved ones and friends and other relations of course…. A text is easy, effortless….unless you don`t have airtime, but still, it`s effortless!  A phone call is convenient. Very convenient! Social networks create a platform for dialogue with many different people across the world. A car, a flight or a bus ride will take you as far as you want to go. No more running to the river….no more standing under trees and talking…. Communication of that sort was so real and it mattered. You had to steal time to spend with the one you loved.

Nowadays people don`t have time…or rather they have time, but they can`t make time available to do things that matter. Talking about things that matter... No more passing around anonymous secret notes in the classroom. And not much effort is put into getting the girl and keeping her, or getting the guy and loving him. Ladies and gents! Old fashioned love had compromise…. sacrifice and a lot of things that shouldn`t matter didn`t matter then, but now they matter too much to overlook now. .. And sadly they take away at the trueness of what love should be like.

On the other hand….I must admit that In the midst of my pondering, there were a few distasteful concepts surrounding the old fashioned love, which I dare to disregard.  The notion behind Arranged marriages was ideal, but I think people should have had the opportunity to find love, as opposed to it being imposed and tolerated with time.

But I guess the good part about them was that regardless of what one had or hadn`t, rarely would you find a man or woman who wasn`t betrothed to another. The other disadvantage was yet again the patriarchal way of ‘disciplining` a woman that seemingly endorsed domestic violence, which I felt defeated the whole purpose of fairness in love between married couples. ….Well that`s a different story for another day.

Love in the modern sense has various attachments.   It has arguably paved way for social ills termed ‘crimes of passion` or the so called passion killings. Love has become fake. Now hear me and hear me well when I say this, I`m not insinuating that there is a fake love and a real love, because in the begging Love was and is still God. Love is real, period; you can`t add to it or take away from it. It is the power of God to be.  All I`m saying is that it does however appear that a lot of people have formed and tarnished the very essence of love. They have created something that resembles love, they have tampered with love itself and created in it all manner of conditions and twisted it to suit them.  Some have even created an impression of love….flawed it with greed, selfishness, lust, and a whole lot of things that God never intended, but yet they call it ‘love`.

Can we boldly say Hello to the Old fashioned love, and maybe say goodbye to the Modern approach to love?? Let`s do away with a few things like greed and selfishness and heavy inclination to material things and learn to search the heart genuinely and love genuinely.

Let`s Adopt a few good things from the old fashioned perspective, maybe instead of writing a  text message, write a letter, put it in the mail box, or better yet…. Deliver it yourself and read it to the one you love. And maybe also pick a few from the modern day approach… buying roses, opening the car door driving off to the river to rekindle those moments under the tree where boy meets girl and girl is captivated. And guy means the words he says and girl honors the words. And together love becomes all that it is. And God remains in the hearts and minds of men that they may love and be loved back just the same. Rome wasn`t built in a day. Start building bricks today; lay your foundation of love in God. ENDS

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