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Why does the longing for love have to be so acute, like a desperate thirst? Is it because love is just wanting to be saved, and we can never really be saved? Maybe love is really born of our fears. Love is the heart's desire for a pain-killer; a tearful plea for a great big epidural. Yes, that's it: love is the only anasthesia that actually works. And so, people with broken hearts are really those who are just coming to. And if you've ever seen someone coming out of a general anesthesia you know that it looks a lot like the beginnings of a boken heart.
But to find it and touch it and hold it! What a relief, if only briefly, until love wears off or slips through our fingers. Strange how love-the most fickle of emotions-creates the illusion of permanence right from the start, just as beauty, so fleeting and elusive can seem so timeless and infinite to behold.
If love doesn't triumph it ought to. For love is the only thing we have that feels more powerful than even death; the only respite from this life's wretched absurdity. The magic of love is not that it contains all the answers, but that it eliminates the need for so many pressing questions. For love makes us feel like gods-and that's what we're really after, isn't it?

Jonathan Hull
Losing Julia






Milton Friedman