At a dinner function on Valentine’s Day, I finally won a prize. It was a dinner for two at one of the better restaurants in Jeddah. After years of dumping coupons or raffle tickets into barrels, drums, cardboard cartons, or large glass beakers, this one finally paid off.

There’s a certain satisfying feeling about winning anything unexpected. And on the next day, while narrating my good fortune to a friend, I was taken aback by his somber response. “Tariq, what were you doing celebrating on that day?”

Huh? Now that’s a balloon-buster! “What do you mean, Samir? Celebrating what, my good fortune?”

“No,” he replied. “Acknowledging Valentine’s Day. Have you started worshipping St. Valentine?” he added. My ire aroused, I had to straighten this fellow and do it quick.

“What do you exactly mean? If you mean that I celebrated that day in remembrance of whoever this Valentine character was, then you are sorely mistaken. And if you were to ask me, yes indeed I bought red roses for my other half. And I even wore a red shirt that evening,” I added in smug defiance.

“And another thing Samir. That was not in remembrance or acknowledgment. That was purely a social affair, more so as it fell on a Thursday, a day when I tend to let my hair down a bit and relax. And if it happened that Valentine did something spectacular in past history on this particular day, its significance wasn’t the issue in my case.”

“Most of us need an excuse to celebrate, be it a marriage anniversary, a birthday, a promotion, or what have you. I see it as a normal function to want to cheer you up. And I am one who would use any excuse, possibly even Mahatma Gandhi’s emergence to lead his nation, to partake of a pleasant diversion from the humdrum of the weekly routine.”

“Think about it for a moment Samir. We seem to spend an extraordinary amount of time and energy evaluating the merits of red roses, or gifts passed between friends and acquaintances, of socializing or just giving. Time and energy that could be far better spent on something more productive. Such as kidney research, or a study on the increase of diabetics in this country.”

“Or how about our mounting traffic woes. Our system of education, the bureaucratic inefficiencies in most of our public sectors, our non-existent options in cases of malpractice by our medical profession. And if that’s not enough, what about unemployment? Or dirty sewage water? Or construction debris?”

“No, Samir. I think a greater part of our problem today is that we tend to focus with intensity on bizarre issues, such as the sins of red roses and Pepsi, forgetting some of the bigger ones on our plate. This is not a religious or cultural issue as you and I know it. This is a matter of perception. And unless we broaden our perspective to envision all that matters around us, I’m afraid that we will be heading into the twenty-second century no more enlightened than we are today.”

“And one last item, Samir. I was almost tempted to invite you along to this restaurant as my dining companion, but I now happen to think that your time would be far better spent in something much more productive!”

— Tariq A. Al-Maeena, (clsencounters@hotmail.com)