Love is All You Need

"What do I do when my love is away?

Does it worry you to be alone?

How do I feel at the end of the day?

Are you sad because you're on your own?

No! I get by with a little help from my friends."

~The Beatles

   Close your eyes. Visualize a summary image of your life, as a whole. Now, imagine how it might look if you had never had any friends. How would you have grown without becoming close to other people? You wouldn't have. You would learn the basic information - language, mathematics, natural law - things that a solitary person naturally learns over time just living in this world. But you would not have learned how people work. You wouldn't know what love was. Or hate. You wouldn't know how to communicate with media other than words. A race of autocentric souls, roaming the world with emotional blinders on. Maybe you'd know people. But you wouldn't really know anyone.
   What if you had never loved, trusted, or esteemed anyone? What would your view of other people be? They would all just be in the way. They would be competition for food, money, and advantage. You'd be just as happy without them around as you would be amongst a throng of them. If anything, you'd desire them to all disappear, as there would then be more of everything for you.
   If love and friendship never existed, the world would be an emotionally empty realm. Men would be as beasts in the wilderness. Instinct and want would drive us - not duty, or favor, or service, or fielty. And this would all be well enough (having no attachments means no entanglements or painful separations), but does that outweigh the loss of the very most important element of human relations? I don't think so.
   Think of your friends. Think of your best friend. Think of your lover. Your family. If it meant never having to share or sacrifice, would you live without emotional attachment to them? Would you cash in the interpersonal value of your relatrionships for total freedom and self-reliance? I could not, and I believe there are very few who could. For we as humans (most of us, anyway), would rather go without, rather take second priority, rather make sacrifices for those we esteem than to be friendless and alone.
   Who is your best friend? Who is your love? And who is your family? I cannot choose a best friend, but I can narrow it down to two people. Without them I would have no one my own age to relate to. No one to share stories from the good old days with. No one to keep me grounded. I have no love of my own, so I must settle for admiring the beloved of my friends, and valuing them as important parts of my friends' lives. And my family is a small group of constant, unwavering supporters that I can and do lean on when the load is heavy. I would be helpless without these people.
   Right after you read this, remind your friends, lovers, and family members that they are vital to your life and health, and wish them comfort and joy in the holiday season. Pay the love forward, and watch it come back to you with a profit.