COMMENT
While you and many others around you celebrate the romance of Valentines’ Day, I hope you pause to think about those who are deprived of love the most.
The global movement, One Billion Rising (OBR), which aims to protest violence against women, reminds people that while we are enjoying romantic dinner dates, there are one billion women across the globe who are robbed of their right to love and be loved.
Instead, they are being violated through disfigurement, verbal abuse or sexual harassment.In light of the terrible gang rape of a young student in New Delhi, which sparked the global movement’s entry to Singapore, such acts of violence needs to be replaced with acts of kind love.
Love that is not necessarily the kind you see portrayed in novels and romantic comedies but the kind that can make a man honour a woman’s pride and dignity or rebuild a woman’s soul after being violated.
Anybody who is capable of violence, is capable of love as well. A US soldier who flew back straight after receiving news that his wife fell into a coma, shows that if he can snap out of the atrocities of war to love his woman, then anyone can.
Closer to home, 48-year-old Kenneth Liew's undying love for his comatose wife is another shining example of the meaning of true love.
Which leaves us to ponder on this Valentine’s Day, about the love (or lack thereof) that we give and receive.
It's not about grand gestures and the ridiculously expensive roses and chocolates we eventually regret buying, but about the giving of and from your heart.
Happy Valentine's Day.
