Love is blind...No more!

Behold, she was blind, but now she can see! I’m talking about love. She went ahead and got herself a good pair of eyes. And in the case where she found her vision impaired, she got herself a pair of glasses to boot.


She was blind when Titanic’s Jack threatened to commit suicide in solidarity with Rose “You jump, I jump”, remember? She was blind when Shakespeare’s Juliet beseeched Romeo to ‘deny thy father and refuse thy name; or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet.’ (Sweet isn’t it?) Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky (From Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina) suffered love’s blindness too. So much that it cost Anna her marriage and she eventually committed suicide even after she got the man she loved! Irony? No. Love actually. Her love for Count Vronsky, the same love that made her plead her husband for a divorce that she never was granted, made her live in constant fear of losing her beloved, even when she had him. She was depressed, unhappy and almost went nuts (with love). Unable to cope, she threw herself in front of a train, killing herself. Love, huh?


From all this botched love stories, we get the feeling that love could be synonymous to pain, heartbreak, misery, suicide; death. Anna Karenina commits suicide, so do Romeo and Juliet. For Rose and Jack - well, Jack died and Rose lived to tell the story. But still…happy endings? Not so much. Why so?


When love is blind, it does nothing but bring misery and heartbreak to the so called ‘lovers’. Who wants to cry anymore? Who wants to have their hearts broken in the name of love? I am glad that women are starting to think more with their heads and not their hearts.


You will hear many a Nairobian woman today quip “Love? Will love put a roof over our heads? Will it put food on our table and feed our children?”

Truth be told, you cannot depend on love for anything! Just the fuzzy feelings that will make you feel like you are walking on a cloud (you’re not!) and the sprint added to your step. It will make you go through your days in a daze (get it?) and your nights…well, your nights could be steamy - I’ll give you that. A replica of a page off Fabio’s book collection even! Oh, fabulous F.A.B.I.O!(gasp)  


But how long does this feeling last? How long before you come down to earth with a shattering rude awakening?


What made love decide to fix her eyes? Was it the futility of her emotions when she realized that she was after men and women she couldn’t have? Was it the betrayal of her emotions when she had illicit affairs in the name of love? Was it the realization that love is just another revered four-letter word? Better still, could it be its ephemeral nature that makes it seek a quick exit once you scratch beneath the surface to get to the intricate not-so-rosy stuff?

Whatever it was, aren’t we glad that love finally ‘saw the light’? I, for one am happy that she realized that all this lovey dovey, hanky-dory attitude was not working for her.
Tina Turner summarized it thus;

What’s love got to do, got to do with it
What’s love but a sweet old fashioned notion?
What’s love got to do, got to do with it
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

Still, there are those who like a tick, cling to blindness in love. They will ignore the flaws, while patting themselves for the ‘nobility’ of their actions. So they date irresponsible men, calling it a weakness that they can fix – with love. They will be seen with hard core thugs who in their love-veiled eyes, are good men who have just made a few wrong choices in their lives but who, with patience and love, could be well on their way to reformed behavior. You will see them dating married men, smothering them with love, while hanging on to the promise that he will leave his wife – his nagging, idiot of a wife who does not know how to take care of a good man. They insist that they have this innate ability to tame philandering men and they look forward to the day he will come home to roost. You see them strung on abusive relationships, convinced that love will fight their battles. Eventually.


With eyes wide shut, one hand to their chest and the other raised in a solemn prayer to the love gods, these women who refuse to open their eyes, continue to love blindly. While they do so, tears flow through their tightly sealed eyelids, unabated. Their hearts break over and over again into tiny and tinier pieces with no one to pick them up and piece them back together. They cry and wallow in sheer pain and disappointment. They hurt. In the name of love.


While others say that love is blind and if you’re not blind you are not in love, I say smart love is not blind; it sees clearly and from what it sees, makes a smart choice on what matters and what doesn’t. What say ye?