There was a time when love felt like a public institution: it was not private, not hidden, not rationed. It was loud, dramatic, and almost embarrassingly sincere. Lover’s Day was not a marketing cycle; it was a cultural atmosphere. You could feel it in the air, in the way people carried themselves, in the softness of their voices when they said someone’s name.
Back then, a single “hello” from your lover could re-calibrate your entire being; your day could be collapsing quietly, but the moment your phone lit up with their name, your bloodstream shifted temperature. Suddenly, life was manageable again. Suddenly, you were chosen.
We were not desensitized then: we felt everything.
The end of the day was sacred. You were not performing online; you were waiting; waiting for that call, waiting for that text, waiting to pour your heart out in paragraphs that would make Shakespeare uncomfortable.
And the letters:
“I picked my pen from the basket of love.”
Who allowed us to be that poetic?
We wrote like we were signing treaties. People sprayed perfume on paper, because scent was part of the message; some of you kissed the envelope to seal the emotions properly, as if the postal service required proof of sincerity. Ink carried longing. Handwriting carried personality. Every curve of every letter was effort.
Love was tactile: you could hold it, fold it, hide it under your pillow.
Then came the adverts.
When MTN released the “Oh Jerry, now you gonna make me cry” advert, with their pen gliding across paper like the opening scene of a romantic novel. That advert did not sell airtime; it sold vulnerability.
“Oh Jerry, now you gonna make me cry.”
The softness in that line alone was enough to destabilize you. It felt like we were all characters inside a love story, waiting for the next confession. Calls were not just calls; they were plot twists.
The media was complicit in raising romantics.
Paloma and Diego suffered beautifully; Passions and Sunset Beach convinced us that love required intensity, sacrifice, and the courage to fight for connection. We grew up believing that if it did not almost ruin you, it was not real.
The musicians baptized us in rain:
Chris Brown spinning in emotional thunderstorms;
Ne-Yo apologizing like regret was a sacred ritual;
Usher confessing with choreography and conviction.
People memorized every line from Bracket’s Yori Yori, and remixed it for their lovers;
It was as if knowing how to sing was a prerequisite for getting into a relationship, because people were singling; the frog and angel voices alike.
They stood in the rain for love, and we believed that standing in emotional rain was noble.
The world felt softer then.
We danced in actual rain without worrying about aesthetics; weekend visits were spontaneous. You knocked on a friend’s door and entered with familiarity. If rice was cooking, you ate; if prayer started, you bowed your head. Families gathered around one table: they ate from one pot, argued together, prayed together, forgave together.
There was wholesomeness because pride was not the foundation of society; vulnerability was.
Intentional vulnerability:
The kind that says, “I am wrong.”
The kind that says, “I miss you.”
The kind that chooses repair over ego.
Now?
Our hearts are like stone.
It is as if the world has stiffened us into emotional death: we do not flinch; we do not melt; we barely react. Someone sends you “I love you,” and it lands like a forwarded message; it does not carry the sacred weight it once did. Sometimes people respond with a WhatsApp reaction, a red heart emoji, a thumbs up—as if love is content to acknowledge, not a truth to receive. Sometimes, people do not even believe it.
Ties break too easily.
Years of friendship are discarded over a single misunderstanding; a bruised ego becomes more important than shared memories. People would rather preserve pride than preserve history. Families go silent for years over small disputes. Brothers stop speaking; cousins become strangers; holidays pass without calls; weddings happen without reconciliation; funerals happen without closure. Emotional distance has become normalized.
This is the generation where blocking someone is a badge of honor: “I cut them off.” Applause. “They no longer have access to me.” Celebration. We glorify detachment as discipline.
Acts of kindness now feel revolutionary; everything is transactional. Affection is calculated. Emotional availability is rationed. We call it protecting our peace. We call it standards. We call it wisdom.
But sometimes I wonder if we have simply hardened ourselves.
Did capitalism kill love; or did survival rebrand it?
When everything became about grinding, monetizing, optimizing, and securing the bag, did love become inefficient? Did vulnerability become poor investment?
Because once upon a time, we cried over adverts. We wrote letters that smelled like perfume. We showed up at people’s houses unannounced. We ate together, prayed together, forgave each other.
The world felt softer because we were softer.
Maybe love is not dead.
Maybe we have just turned our hearts to stone and convinced ourselves it is strength.
Maybe the real tragedy is not that people do not say “I love you,” but that we no longer know how to believe it.
There was a time when a letter could make us cry, when a “hello” could fix a bad day, when vulnerability was courageous and pride was optional. Perhaps the question is not whether love exists, it is whether we still allow ourselves to feel it.
Thank God today is Valentine yes, that corporate-approved reminder that love is supposed to be a thing we actively market once a year. But forget the chocolates, the overpriced roses, the social media flexing. Today, I’m talking about the old-school kind of love.
And no, it doesn’t have to be a lover. If your romantic life is in quarantine, good. There’s still life to be lived, hearts to be touched, and grudges to be burned. Call your family, yes, even the ones who give you side-eye at every family gathering. Text your friends, the ones you ghosted over nonsense. Hug that person you’ve been avoiding because your ego is apparently bigger than your heart.
Repair that relationship. Swallow your damn pride. I said swallow it whole. Life is short, my people, shorter than your attention span for drama, shorter than the patience you give yourself to fight for what matters.
Today is the day to show love not as a transaction, not as a flex, not as a postable moment. Show it as it used to be: messy, inconvenient, brave, human.
Go on, send that message. Make that call. Kiss that paper, if you must. Just make sure someone knows today that they matter.
But Baron what if they do not respond ? Well, that is not your business. Do your part !!
Because tomorrow, we’ll all be scrolling again. And pride? Pride won’t save you from regret.
By:
Baron
