OPINION: Love still shines in a brutal world

WHAT is love? What is hope? What sustains people when darkness falls across the Earth? Humans have been searching for those answers since the dawn of time and will continue to do so as long as hearts beat and thoughts are formed.
Of course, Hollywood shows us a certain menu of what love and hope should look like. The cinematic influencers take us through their version of the ups and down of existence – the intricacies of emotions and the never-ending search for contentment and happiness.
Music created by everyone from Vivaldi to Green Day does likewise. Vivaldi was an Italian composer who lived between 1678 and 1741. He was hugely productive – his output included 46 operas and 500 concertos. He was a priest, but that didn’t curb his colourful way of life where his affection for beautiful women was central. His thoughts on love, hope and happiness are interesting and instructional to say the least.
Modern musicians like Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and the rest of the guys in Green Day are among the innumerable bands producing words and music charting the search for understanding when it comes to love, hope and the future. In Green Day’s famous song ‘Good Riddance’, the boys from East Bay in California tell us ‘It’s something unpredictable / But in the end, it’s right / I hope you had the time of your life’.
Love, hope and contentment are certainly unpredictable, but every so often something catches the imagination and shows us that devotion to another human is possible, beautiful and never-ending.
Take Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya as inspiration. Born Sviatlana Pilipchuk, she fell in love with a man destined to be in the eye of political storms in Belarus. It would have been much easier to connect with a ‘safer’ partner, but that’s not how life works. That’s not the route a person follows when the heart decides otherwise.
Tsikhanouskaya’s husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky, was an opposition politician in Belarus where the people have been ruled over by Alexander Lukashenko since the office of president was first established in 1994. As the 2020 presidential election came into focus it was obvious that Lukashenko would be ousted by Tikanovsky or one of his fellow candidates if a free and fair election were held, so all opponents of the sitting president were thrown in prison.
Then, love and hope stepped in.
Tsikhanouskaya, an English teacher and interpreter who had actually spent lots of her formative life in Roscrea, declared herself a candidate for the presidency. Lukashenko didn’t even bother to throw her in jail, believing a woman couldn’t lead a movement of people against him.

He was wrong.
ON August 9, 2020, millions turned out to polling stations with white ribbons on their wrists to vote for Tsikhanouskaya. A few hours later, the state-controlled media declared that only a tiny number had actually voted for the opposition leader, but everyone knew the real story.
In the following days the people of the that beautiful country rose against Lukashenko and supported the woman who was standing against oppression because of the love she possessed for her husband.
For a time there was the belief, the hope that people-power would change history. The people came from their homes and their farms and gathered at central points in joyous celebration of a future that seemed within reach. They gathered in the towns and cities and all along the roads waving their white and red flags. A sense of hope swept across the nation.
But Lukashenko held firm. He had the support of Vladimir Putin and the military might of the Russian Bear. Tanks and guns faced smiling people waving white and red pieces of cloth, and that tyrannical power proved decisive.
The woman who put herself centre stage because of the love she had for her husband and the hope she had for her people was kept from the presidency by the strong-arm tactics of an oppressive ruling elite.
However, wherever there is love, there is also hope, and in Belarus, like many other places around the world, the desire for freedom, the desire to live in a just society never wanes and the flame of freedom never goes out.
Today, Tsikhanouskaya leads the opposition from Lithuania, and her people dream of days when love and hope will carry them to power and a much brighter future.
Whether it’s Vivaldi, Green Day or a brave woman from Belarus, love and hope will never wane. The dream of better days never fades away.