Invisbile Commodity

01.05.07

The invisible commodity: the one we all hanker after, profess to understand, aspire to, name in its various forms and with any degree of fortune we will experience at least once in our lives.

Love: the bond that ties us to those we care for, the human glue which sticks us all together. It cannot be bought or sold, even traded, though a thousand dating agencies perhaps have based their business on that very premise.

It has spawned a million sonnets, songs in abundance and fuelled entire industries of film, literature and tacky gifts.

It is the one emotion that we can all identify with in times of joy and sadness. It is, as I once said to you, what makes us selfish as well as selfless -you struggled with that because you had been told a thousand times that love was duty; that even if love was dead you should not leave. In fact, it is the selfish instinct that makes a father protect a child or a lover protect the muse - fear of losing what we most treasure.

So this love we feel is overwhelming and now you are gone, I wonder what to do with it. That's part of the hurt big man - how do we stop the love? Well, I guess we don't and haven't. I'd like them to measure my tears for love and tell me how much is in there.

We lost our love in you too John - this presence of love which filled our lives and brought us smiles and sunshine. You have disappeared and taken yours with you - so there is the double whammy; no love to have and too much left here to give.

The songs and sonnets tell us that better to have loved once than never at all; better to have experienced the physical manifestations of it; better to have known it through you.

In part they are right, I am sure. It's just that being without you is very painful and so I guess that why the same fonts of wisdom also tell us that love hurts. Something that you knew to your cost sweet man.