Love

"Love is for poets."

Or so intones Christopher Lambert in "Highlander". Some would agree with him, I suspect. There is scarcely a thought in the universe that someone doesn't hold as a key sacred article to their existence.

I believe in love. Not just for poets. And before you condemn me as an anti-intellectual, an unmodern man, I am not ignorant of the biological, physiological and pharmacological/chemical bases for what we call love. Indeed, when I do war within myself, that is a favourite topic of my cynical side to throw at me.

Love makes us stronger, better, purer. It awakens our sense, gives us a will to endure, and ennobles us.

Surely more than just poets need these things and certainly in the world we live in, if everyone, from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high embrace love in all of its colours, shades, hues, designs, style and trappings, this world would be a better place.

Yes, for the poets, too. The fact that I have exiled the romantic side of me from my daily existence for so long does take its toll on me, creatively, physically, emotionally, spiritually. As a man who has built his adult life around find and worshipping the goddesses of his sphere, an agnostic existence is brutal, self-flagellation of a sort.

My friend, Thomas, says I am the most fearless man he ever met. But in my eyes, I am a coward. Hiding from that which defines me because of one wound long healed but not forgotten. How do you trust when the lips of truth are hushed by those who will tell you, in the moment, what gains them what they want, but at the expense of those they swear to love.

What of promises made, not in the moment, but on immortal oaths?

I cannot and will not answer for others, as I cannot and will not know they hearts and souls and the roles they are destined to.

I can but answer for my own heart. And I, for one, believe.