Column - Week 1.

The Four Letter Word, a weekly column by Farah Ashraff

From a small dusty town of Klang, one girl strives to spread the hope that love could still be the superhero that would save this planet. For 21 years, Farah Ashraff have been observing how love is used as an armor, abused for lust and power and confused under the deceit of material desire and believes that we should all try a little harder to give love a little credit. That is exactly what she would be doing in this first article on the series of column she would like to call ‘The Four Letter Word’.

THE NEW FOUR-LETTER-WORD

            The ever so famous four-letter bad word has finally found its match; love and al though it is a newcomer for words that are hard to say and what society deemed inappropriate to mention, it is climbing up the chart pretty fast. In fact, we now utter the four-letter-word more than we do love without thinking twice. Which is funny because isn’t love supposed to be a good word?

            Society today seems too afraid to talk about love, it has become sort of a taboo and it makes people uncomfortable at the mere mention of it. It shows that the more advance we become the more inarticulate we are when it comes to expressing such a crucial emotion. No wonder divorce rates are escalating every year, we do not talk about what we are getting ourselves into.

            Take movies for example, how long does it take for the main characters to confess that they love each other? When they finally do, how hard is it for them to get it right? Most of the characters get into bed together even before they start to figure out if they actually have any form of emotional attraction to the other person. As the media is one of the most powerful forms of influence to society, movies would in fact impact us and our children to think that it is okay to do so.

            In the end, the bigger question is, is it okay for society to accept that we put the four-letter bad word ahead of love? Because if it is, we might as well accept in unison that love should be the new four-letter-word.  Al though I would like to think that we are human beings and are complex enough to deal with an emotion like love as a priority. As many had quote before us, “Love makes the world go round”, hopefully, in this generation, it still does.

Catch Farah again  next week as she will be talking about how our fast-paced era have turn relationships to be almost similar with technology – fast, packed with features and replaceable after a short period of time. Would love be able to conquer technology or will it be the other way around, log on to www.thestar/columns/thefourletterword.com to tell us what you think.