something to believe in

“though we rush ahead to save our time, we are only what we feel” — Neil Young

“well we’ve both lived long enough to know we’d trade it all right now
for just one minute of real love” — Patrick Henderson/Michael McDonald

and then, after all —
after all the struggle, all your life, to fit in, to belong,
to do what you’re told you’re supposed to do,
to be who you’re supposed to be,
after you’ve finally figured out how this world actually works,
how this civilization makes us all ill,
and how it’s falling apart faster than we can imagine,
after you start to begin to begin to understand
what it means to be human,
and that your sense of self is all illusion
that you are a nothing less than the complicity of a trillion cells —

after all that,
you realize that none of this matters without love.

you tell yourself that your life is, still or finally,
full of love,
but why, then, do you so crave appreciation and attention,
love’s sad substitutes?

you say you love this person,
but it’s really not the same as what you once felt,
that incredible rush, that delirious invincible feeling.
you want proof that it’s still love,
it’s just you that’s jaded,
that the person who sits across from you at dinner,
listening attentively, you imagine, to your words,
that the crowd before you when you speak, or perform,
nodding and applauding enthusiastically, it seems,
that the work you do, for which you’re paid and highly rated,
prove that you are loved,

and that you love them in return.

but something’s missing, something that was once there,
making you joyful and filled with purpose, has somehow
quietly stolen away, leaving a silence, an emptiness.

you try to blame this loss on many things:
on our monogamous, love-stingy society
in which “the best ones are always taken”,
and in which the work of trying to keep love alive
becomes just another grinding job.

or on the insensitivity or stupidity of others,
and the exhausting slavery of modern work,
which make our hearts hard and cold.

though mostly you blame yourself,
for not caring enough about all you have,
for hurting, and letting down, the ones you claim to love,
for always wanting more, and what and who you can’t have.

but who you blame doesn’t matter either;
it changes nothing —
doesn’t lessen the pangs, the yearning
for more love, new love, real love,
love that makes life meaningful,
makes it all worthwhile.

so you retreat back to distraction:
you love this music, these stories, these videos,
your snuggles with the dog,
the cutie at the store or down the hall
who always smiles at you.
surely these count as love, most of them:
they lift you up, give you hope that real love can be found
or found again,
that that feeling for which you live, body and soul,
is still possible, is not gone forever.

image from the cover of Rickie Lee Jones’ album Pirates