To read part III of this series, click on the following link: https://creativewritersleague.co.ke/the-love-laboratory-part-iii/
At this time, some ladies began receiving proposals and some were married. You would begin a semester with someone only to reach the middle and she was off. She was to return later not to join the class but the junior one which had moved to the level which you were when she left. It was at this time that the first type of disaster occurs. Couples being broken by arranged marriages. A couple who had been having a strong till-death-do-us –apart relationship got into trouble. The lady was married off to another man. It seemed the family did not believe in marriage for love. It also seemed that the lady anyway was not the one to decide. The relationship had to die. But as if that was not enough a few months later the lady was pregnant. At times she would be so tired that she could just sit on the floor in case she came late (which she mostly did) and could not find a seat. Man, the boy was stressed. Anyone would have been stressed. We empathized with him. I remembered the old wisdom. Do not defecate where you eat. It means do not have a relationship where you work or extensively, study. In case something goes wrong, you may end up having a hard time and less room to escape and a constant reminder of your predicament. Nobody had seen that coming. That was so crappy. Growing up is challenging. It was tough in this instance.
Arranged marriage or forced marriage was something you heard about. At one time a lady was admitted due to somatization emanating from the stress of such an arrangement. She did not want to be married by that man. Somatization is a tendency to experience and communicate psychological distress in the form of generation of physical signs and symptoms of a psychiatry condition-with no discernible organic cause. Somebody’s –especially females-right arm and left limb get paralyzed for instance due to a psychiatric condition such as extreme anxiety rather than organic causes such as stroke. For the Obamanian generation, this was an affront to personal freedoms with a pretext of parental wisdom and religious teaching. In fact, religion gives the lady a say when considering a man with whom she will spend the rest of her life. Parents have to play the advisory role. Nothing more. But man must live.
The second disaster was the clique that was interested in plucking boyfriends from their fellow sisters. One of such wanted to woo my friend and leave his girl hanging. To me, he wanted to bring change which was not an improvement but a selfish switch. My friend was worried about the advances and knew it could cost his relationship. The girl claimed he wanted him as a study partner but was sending more signals than that. I had to intervene as one of the players was my friend. I had to tell the girl to think twice before doing what she had already initiated. Did she want a boyfriend or a study partner? In any case, there were many intelligent girls who were ideal for study partners. I reminded her that the guy was occupied and she knew better. So why was she playing a spoiler? She saw sense. How beautiful.
The last kind of disaster was the Serial monogamists. These guys violated the essence of love. These guys confused the scene. These guys ought to have been pasted with tags reading ` I am desperate for love’. These guys ought to have been taken to the prison of love violators! These guys couldn’t afford to be single for two weeks. These guys forgot being single is just for a season. It is part of life. I understand we are not built to be alone and the twenty-first century doesn’t make it easy. But love is allowing. It is not anxiety. It is being intentional, not desperate.
With desperation comes the element of right now in the fantasy. It is like he or she wants you now, to use you now. And you are like I don’t want to be you, I don’t want you to use me as a prop. You seem to be a shark to me. I don’t want you to snap me. I think a series of low-commitment, possibly destructive relationships can create bad habits and erode faith in love. Anger was driving them.
Maybe some of them want it now for sex? Hell no. This clique then confuses sex with love. Their hearts are always still empty. Maybe some use sex to draw love. But they are two different things. Sex clouds everything. It gets in the way. You are to think of a relationship without sex. How can we relate like in marriage, in other areas of mutual interest, or even when sex no longer has that initial spark due to monotony? But these guys don’t realize they have to chill out of relationships to regain their cool and focus. To get some insight and clarity of what their hearts need. At that rate, they would keep on repeating the same mistakes and more heartaches. In lab love, we did find a scientific term for this phenomenon. It is anuptaphobia, the fear of remaining single.
Epilogue
This four-part series of the love lab shouldn’t make you be mistaken that the Faculty is made up of testosterone-sex hormone-driven guys. It is just the funny stuff that used to happen among some guys. It is what any normal guy was doing outside there. The difference was the positive and negative charges were more close here than anywhere else on the campus. And opposite charges attract. Plus the frontal lobe does not fully mature until sometime between the ages of twenty and thirty. In our twenties, the pleasure-seeking, emotional brain is ready to go while the forward-thinking frontal lobe is still a work in progress. The majority were quite studying you didn’t even know they existed.
The love lab was made of some of the best minds on the campus. You needed to be smart intellectually to get there. It had guys who had great insight and strong conviction. Guys from whom you learned first before you learned from lecturers. In the lab love, everyone studies psychology which makes people very inventive when it comes to dating techniques. Guys are very involved in personal growth, spirituality, and everything that can nurture life, healing, and growth.
The love lab had some of the greatest sheikhs on the campus. They could give Students of Sharia a run for their money. They also had their special fiqh; The Fiqh Thwabib which made them experts in town in issues where medicine and religion intersect. The love lab had men and women who had sacrificed their lives for humanity. Who as others enjoyed life after Asr and Magrib could still be holed in lecture halls listening to lectures and internalizing the knowledge. They embodied what their predecessor, Theodor Billroth (1829-94) had note about them: The pleasures of a physician are little, the gratitude of patients is rare and even rarer is the material reward, but these things will never deter the students who feel the call within them. END.
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Our very own writer Weyula Yusuf has been nominated by National Youth Council Kenya for a creative writing competition. We need your votes to make him become a winner in shaa Allah.To vote for Yusuf (Mufti) please search national youth council on Facebook and comment under the finalists post the name e.g Weyula Yusuf You can also vote on Twitter by commenting the name under the same post To vote on twitter: https://twitter.com/NYC_YouthVoice/status/1286224910126383105?s=19
To vote on Facebook, please comment on these 2 posts: https://m.facebook.com/notes/national-youth-council-kenya/youth-and-leadership-by-yusuf-weyula-matsabe-age-25-years/3653745607973615/
https://m.facebook.com/YouthCouncilKe/photos/a.650401398308066/3653710211310488/?type=3&surce=48
Thank you!!