Losing Love

I love the metaphysical poets. Particularly Donne. This morning I read out 'Valediction Forbidding Mourning' to the two flies trapped in our living room. It made me cry. The flies were moved too, but not enough to fly out of the house. This is probably not a proper thing to be doing, but I enjoyed it- even though I cried. I don't know exactly why I get emotional. It is so strange to think that I am reading words, which are the thoughts of a man who lived over 400 years ago. I feel connected to him even though he no longer exists. Perhaps I am connected to him, as I am to all people, after all, he wrote the famous lines;

"No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...Every man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."

When I think of the great universality of human life experience and how we are all connected, it moves me to tears. Not because I feel sad, but because the concept is so beautiful and it feels like the truth. I've often felt like this when I have said something really truthful. I think it is hard to speak one's truth all the time. Most of the time we skirt around it, decorate it or say the opposite to engender a response. We throw out bait to check the other person's truth, before we reveal our own. When we get to the heart of our emotions, we are always delicate with our expression. It is never easy.

My dear friend Zara will be breaking up with her boyfriend because he needs to go off into the world and create himself. He needs a profession and needs to go away to 'become his own man', I guess. They both agree that this is necessary but they both feel that they are in love and do not really wish to let the other go. In previous times, our grandparent's era, people were separated for up to 5 years during the war. They waited for one another. Now, if someone is going away for 3 months, it is easy to question the value of the relationship. Perhaps something better will come along during the time apart? Daniel Kitson, the comedian, writes a long argument to support his theory that "the world is too big for love to be real, there are too many people to ever know, beyond everything that you are with the right person." But he finishes with; "But I do still miss her." How do we know how much to value our love? My Dad once said something wonderful to me which was, "all you can ever do, is love the people you love to the best of your ability".

I think we are all searching for that eternal love which cannot be made or broken by a man or woman's success or failure, that is 'not altered when it alteration finds,' as Shakespeare wrote. That is enduring, everlasting and true because it makes us feel that we are part of something greater, that even death cannot touch pure love. In Donne's 'Valediction' he writes;

"Dull sublunary lovers love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it."

In Hollywood it is hard to find examples of this love. People are bound by the sparkly shells of one another and find it hard to look into the soul trapped inside, because they are often blinded by their own beauty/talent/power. Everything is almost too sparkly, too delightful. Like in Milton's paradise, we become lazy and spoilt by abundance and beauty. We fail to seek that deeper character in ourselves and others because we do not need it to succeed here. We are fluffy and pretty and light- yet easy to blow out. That is why it is always so amazing to see a couple who have been together for a very long time who really are still so enraptured with each other. It is a rarity. That is why it make me cry to read Donne's poem as he describes their parting; 'like gold to airy thinness beat', he reminds her that they are forever connected in an unbroken chain that is untouchable. If indeed these thoughts on love are true, then if Zara is meant to be with her boyfriend, they will be re-united. It always makes me sad to think that someone could miss it though, that love, that they could give it up and let it go and lose it. But perhaps, if they did, then it wasn't that kind of love, after all. I am not sure if proper people would let love pass them by. I'd like to think that no-one possibly could.