Loved and Lost

How much can you lose for love?

The idea of falling in love is so peculiar that you really have to live it to know it. It is nothing like having a crush on that girl or liking your boyfriend or just being there for someone; it is a different ball game.

Most people would say, and this is just an assumption, that falling in love means stepping out of one’s self to live for another person. It involves so many sacrifices and compromises; and if you are not with the right person (even if you have crossed the ‘till death do us part’ line) you will be forced to wonder ‘to what end?’

Daddy

by Danielle Steel is a tale of loving and losing. In this 1989 novel, Oliver Watson’s wife realizes she has given up too much for the people she loves – her husband and three kids – and in the process, she has lost herself. Sarah Watson steps out of her marriage to pursue her dreams – finish graduate school and write novels.

Meanwhile, her distraught husband has to deal with the dregs of his 20 years old marriage, his mother’s untimely death, two kids that resent him for chasing their mother away and his elder son’s decision to forgo school and settle with a pregnant teenage girlfriend.

The book was an interesting read but I do not appreciate Steel’s approach to the story. From the title,

Daddy

, anyone can guess that the book would most likely be centered on a male figure and it was.

Steel spent over 300 pages trying to make the reader feel bad for Oliver Watson; like he was the one who had loved and lost. Not much was said of Sarah, who had to sacrifice her ambitions for a man who did little to go out of his own way for her.

www.newtimes.co.rw

Oliver had it all – the good job, big house, a housewife and three kids – and he wanted it that way. He claimed he loved his wife but he cajoled her (more than once) to forgo school and have child after child, did little to help her with her housewifery (and the monotony that comes with that) and could not reason with her when she decides to go back to school. How is this guy the good guy?

Be it as it may, the novel is a reflection of our society. People are giving up all that they are for love. It seems like the noble and romantic thing to do. We are told we need to make sacrifices and so we do.

Many at times, the woman is the one doing all of the forgoing while the man thrives in his comfort zone. That is the norm (it has been this way since the midcentury). And that is a very stupid norm.

I am all for making sacrifices and compromising but it is not worth it if it is one-sided. Love is a two way street and it should feel that way. You should not give up a part of you for someone who is not willing to give up an equal part of him or herself.

Love is amazing and being in love is incredible but how much do you have to lose to feel that way?

                                                                                                       - Tobi Nifesi