Mr J L Harding

You’ve lived your entire life drifting by uneventfully, your whole life being just an existence and nothing more. Day in, day out, you wake up, go about your daily life and maintain a monotonous continuance where nothing significant ever really happens. You’re not particularly unhappy, your life has it’s ups and downs, just like everyone else’s’. But you have a feeling, a deep desire yearning from within, telling you repeatedly that you’re destined for something greater than this. You can feel in every fibre of your body that you’re missing something, something that once found, will not only allow you to exist, but to live.

Eventually though, after years of waiting, you’re lulled into an acceptance. You almost feel content with this endless feeling of absence in your life. You are just about done, finally just about to give up on all hope of achieving that special something when, unexpectedly, you meet them.

That one singular person that initially means nothing to you, a passing glance maybe, a courteous nod, a smile as you merely acknowledge their presence. And in those first moments, they mean nothing to you. They are nothing more than a brief acquaintance of your life, neither adding nor delaying it in any way, shape or form.

How does one then, over time, transform from a mere acquaintance, a brief exchange of simple greetings, into a person who’s very existence gives our life purpose? A person who can bring instant euphoria flooding through your heart with a mere glance? A person who at once made no impact upon our lives, suddenly becomes the whole defining principle in them? Their simple presence a warming glow that strengthens us from the very core.

“Love” is a word so overused in modern society it has rather lost it’s value. In this commercialised world that we inhabit to say “I love you” holds a far less significant expression than it would have previously. We live in a generation where love is merely a word, an emphasis of “like” but with no real stature. How can we describe our feelings then to this one person that defines all that we live for, work for, strive to do better for, when the very word put forward has lost it’s worth? How can we expect one word to portray the entire contents of our bursting hearts?

Yet then, we must ask ourselves, could any? Is there even a possibility that the true description of love could be summarised using only words?