The 4Ps of St. Valentine's Day

The mindlessness with which many people approach St. Valentine's Day (especially in Nigeria) makes me wonder if we shouldn't rename it ‘February Fools Day' (i.e. February's version of April 1).

The day brings out the best and the worst in human beings. It is the only chance many of us get to be creative in our lifetimes; the time when the alignment of sun, moon, stars and flowers in the solar system stirs long dormant creative juices and provides us the rare opportunity to be ‘4-persons-in-one', as follows:

Psychologist:

Choosing the perfect Valentine's Day gift entails drawing upon significant levels of Psychological Analysis & De(con)struction (PAD) skills, in an attempt to home in on the perfect gift(s) for your lover(s).

This role/skill, I might add, seems to apply mostly to male humans only. Or why else would Sigmund Freud, pre-eminent researcher of the human mind throw up his hands and declare:

"The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?"

As far as I know, no woman living or dead has yet expressed any such paralyzing bewilderment about the mind of man. Instead, we have in popular lore and culture such sayings like "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach." (Men are therefore, in conclusion, amazingly simple creatures. Feed their eyes, feed their stomachs, feed their egos, feed their lusts, and they will wag their tails forever and ever and ever).

Project Manager:

It does take a lot of corporate-world (aka "cubicle-compliant") skills to pull off a successful Valentine's Day Project. Men and women find themselves compelled to deploy highly sharpened project management, event management, and document management skills. Elaborate plans have to be made and pulled off. Receipts have to be stowed away from gift recipients. And because the entire day is meant to revolve around secrecy - secret gifts, secret plans, and in some cases, secret lovers, confidentiality is key. You must therefore force the lover-boy part of you to sign a confidentiality agreement with its rational-being counterpart.

Procurement Specialist:

The mind has been analyzed (or mis-analyzed), the range of potential gifts outlined, project planning in on course and on schedule. Procurement Specialist is who you are when you close the deal. The part where you put the cash - or ATM card - on the table - with or without bargaining. And this is perhaps the most difficult part of all, especially for the male species. And it is this procurement business that gives rise to the next role, the most important of all:

Philosopher:

In carrying out all of the above roles you need to ask yourself this question: "At what level of my financial empowerment journey am I at the moment?"

To everything there is a time and a season. A time to live small and a time to live big. A time to love small and a time to love big. A time of Small Beginnings. The time of the Modest Middle. The Time of Grand Arrival ("I have Arrived!").

Moral of the sermon: It is OK to start small. Don't run ahead of yourself.

I remember my NYSC days, only a few years ago in Asaba, Delta State. My earnings were modest, and so were my needs. I wisely avoided the sole Mr. Biggs outlet in the town. I settled instead for ‘buka' solutions to my perennial hunger problem. Akpu (also known as "6a.m.-to-6 p.m.") and Oha soup and meat and water, for less than a hundred naira per ‘package'. If I needed a treat I'd order a Coca Cola.

Today I can afford all the Mr. Biggs I want.

And someday soon I will be financially empowered enough to order all my meals from the Sheraton or Hilton.

How, you want to ask, does this apply to Valentine's Day? Here's how:

You don't have to spoil her/him with that Lazzara yacht this February the 14th. If you can't afford it, it can definitely wait. Give her/him a yacht-shaped cake instead.

But please make sure to ask the cake shop to inscribe on the cake, in red-and-white icing, the following words: "The journey of a thousand miles - from yacht-shaped cake to ocean-bound yacht - begins with a single step."

Happy Valentine's Day 2009!