Variation of a theme

WHAT is good about the Valentine season is that, unlike Christmas, it is celebrated for only a day.

Each year at this time of the year, I dig up a 1918 poem by the famous General George S. Patton, Jr. I had copied it from an old magazine I found in a beach house in La Union. It’s entitled “Woman.”

“You can never tell about a woman
Perhaps that’s why you think they are so nice
You can never see two alike at one time
And you are never very certain that they love you
For a man may argue till that
He has the strongest will
But a woman has the strongest won’t”

I find Patton’s poem quite remarkable. It unravels certain truths about the human situation.

History is fraught with stories of certain men who, upon losing well loved wives, married their sisters-in-law. Sorrow often resulted with the failure to make a fantasy incarnate.

As to the certainly about a woman’s love, it is arguably a most volatile endeavor. My favorite presidential candidate, the Great Erap, has a solution to winning a girl’s love: romancing and financing. I often failed in both, honestly.

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Most lover boys also fail in the latter, blaming the recession of 2009 for their improvidence. Probably most of the women who refuse to believe in the financial meltdown were former students of my wife whose fighting slogan is “Love is great, but cash is better.”

Generally, to my limited knowledge, the problem of lovers is not really due to lack of money but the excess of it.

That is the way it is with Kris and James, with Pacman and Krista. The abundance of cash did not buy domestic peace and harmony, but caused injury in their spiritual lives.

For James and Pacman, who are great athletes with tremendous physical prowess, it is the super abundance of energy that is the source of their dalliance with younger girls.

Often it is the pleasure procured by money that creates remorseless pain. What the real wives (Kris and Jinky Pacquiao) now undergo can not be bad karma.

The injury the men do and the one their wives suffer are not weighed in the same Aesopian scales. Women suffer long and forget less. That’s why they come from Venus.

Some philanderers are known to be emotionally immature and can be considered as “babes” in the wood. All that is needed to pacify them or keep them upright is the ancient method of whacking them on the head whenever they commit an infidelity.

“You will have to give him a dose of castor oil!” said the medical man to the child’s mother, after a careful diagnosis.

“But Doctor,” said the mother, “Castor oil is such an old fashioned remedy.”

The doctor nodded in agreement. “Babies, madam,” he replied, “are old fashioned things.” Don’t spare the rod, use that rolling pin.

A failure to whack a recidivist son (Jason Ivler) has made the mother, (Marlene Aguilar) guilty of dereliction of duty. Emerson says that men are what their mothers made them. Devils are made by mothers’ permissiveness and negligence.

Lovers and mistresses were appalled to learn that the celebrity couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had separated. For many years the world amazed at the kind of love and happiness that had characterized their union.

A texter sent this SMS: Being happy does mean everything’s perfect. It means you’ve decided to see life beyond the imperfections. So don’t say you’re happy because everything’s all right. Be happy because everything sucks but you’re doing just fine.”

For the recent past nothing tops love’s most sensational drama in the Katrina-Hayden Kho affair; sad regrets in love’s failure (Edu Manzano-Pinky Webb) great optimism in Mar-Korina marriage.

On this Valentine season many women and girls would be very happy to receive gifts, be pampered and romanced - the pretty ones will be displayed by their lovers. I wish them “Happy Valentine” with the reminder that the supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. (Victor Hugo). If you feel less than this you have been cheated.

To those without dates on this day, there’s always Jesus. He will keep you company.