We cling to each other because it makes us feel like we not alone...

I, like 18 million other Britons, watched the marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan. Being a recently lapsed Royalist, it did bring on that warm and fuzzy feeling that the Royal family gives.

Bizarrely, there was an article, late last week, detailing how the death of the Queen would affect this Country and how devastating it would be, economically and emotionally. It did get me thinking, she has been Head of State, the Queen of the UK and the Commonwealth, for longer than I have been alive. I have only ever sung "God Save the Queen" and I am not sure how I will cope once the inevitable does happen.

This does tie in with some thoughts I had about events during the Wedding and my own personal, reflective thoughts.

The wedding was absolutely wonderful but I did get very sick of people making some big deal about a woman of mixed heritage, marrying into the Royal family. It strikes me that she is a woman that a Prince fell in love with and to view it any other way, to bring in colour or ethnicity, is simply making this about something it is not, people getting married because they love each other has nothing to do with colour or race.
Surely in 2018, we just accept someone and move on, that is what equality is, bringing up anything else makes an issue out of a totally irrelevant "point".

I did listen hard to the words of the American Preacher and whilst his sentiments were good, I found myself disagreeing with his central tenet about love and love being a collective thing because I see love as a very personal thing.
No two people feel the same types of love, there are similarities but love is an individual thing. As an example, those of us that married for love, we know how we felt, looking at Harry's face during the Wedding on Saturday, I knew how I felt at that time, it was probably very similar to way he felt, I could see it in his face, but all I am doing is cutting and pasting how I felt, on top of his feelings, it's all any of us can do.
We all feel love differently, it is not a collective feeling, it is a unique feeling generalised to the collective in the word "love".


So, the collective love of other people, of other Nations, of other Religions, how can you love something or someone that you really have no opinion of? We can't truly love people we don't know, we can't force ourselves to love. We can force ourselves to be more tolerant but that doesn't really have the same ring as the Christian value of loving your neighbour. Be friendly to your neighbour, like your neighbour, tolerate your neighbour, none of those have the same ring to them, but for those of us that think literally, to tell me to love something is a step too far, something that I can't do, an impossibility, besides, love can never cure the ills of the World, love has started more wars than it has ended, love of power, property, even the love of a woman, if the tale of Troy is correct. Even in the Bible, love lays a strong man down, it did to Adam, Samson and King David. I am not sure when love ever ended a war, usually someone is too beaten to continue, too much blood has been shed or an intervention by a stronger military power stops it.

The vast majority of the UK is Royalist and I am sure we will all mourn deeply when the day comes and maybe that is a collective love, the deep rooted ache to the very core that I get at certain times, Armistice Day, when I see the Red Arrows or the BBMF, certain days when I am at one with the Country, to feel how deep my roots are, to feel the ancestors beneath my feet, to know that we are a part of a very unique group of peoples with a recorded history of thousands of years, a nation of stone circles and mysticism, of leylines and magick, of culture appropriation and cultural absorption and I feel that deep rooted ache but is that love or pride or both? I suspect both and expect that many people also feel similar, but I am not sure how I would know.It is not that feeling of love that I have for my family, it is something in my bones, not in my heart, a part of what I am, is that love?

The reality is that love is a lonely road, you only think that you share it but you never do because your love is different to the love your spouse feels, your feelings don't match or mirror because we are all different, all unique, all individuals muddling through a World of confusion, trying to make sense out of chaos. We cling to each other because it makes us feel like we not alone but we are.
I know that love is real but it is a term that we flout around, much like the words genius or hate. I love cheesecake, I love my valve amp, I love my guitars, I love ice cream. We overuse and devalue words until they become a hollow meaning, you say love and can almost hear the echo, where the value of love used to be.

Nowadays we "love" so much but care so little. We are all desensitized to feeling anything regarding the state of humanity, too overloaded with spam emails telling us that we can sign a petition and fix the World, that £3 a month will save a life, provide water, provide education, stop abuse, delete as applicable. We are weary of social media, of the email abuse, of being told what to think, of the bleeding liberal biased new reports. And then someone tells me that the World would be a better place if I loved more...

What should I love more? Who and why? Is it an ideal? If so, what is the ideal. An impassioned plea for 14 minutes just makes me question what you are asking me to do. You want more love in the World but you can't begin to tell me how to make that happen. I can't feel love for a stranger, not even a twinge of affection, indifference maybe but then I keep getting told that a signature or donation will fix things and I have reached the point of f**k it, I don't care, I am too stretched and pulled by people wanting a piece of my goodwill or finances to care.
I feel my world becoming smaller as I draw in the things that I love and consolidate my position of indifference. This is what happens when empathy reaches extinction point, it dissipates, no big bang, just a feeling of resignation, this is how the World is and it's no different to how it was 30 years ago, nothing has changed, we are all still praying for peace but are really more concerned with our own little corner of the World, too cynical to care anymore.

How did I get from a Royal Wedding to this? With a great deal of romanticism, cynicism and a soupçon of suspicion of religion.

I would say just one nice thing though, draw those you love in close, you may be alone but loving is never a lonely thing to do, infact it is the only thing to do, just keep the scale small and you will be able to look after the things that really matter to you. Your heart can never be big enough to care for everything,just care for those you love and the World is a better place for having you in it.