Halliday and the Beatles tried to answer this question.
I think I know what Love is. Love is the magnetic opposite of loneliness.
Loneliness is what happens in the heart of a 11-year old when his mother suffers a mental breakdown, is committed to a mental institution, undergoes electric shock therapy, becomes an outpatient, returns home, and spends the next 2.5 years in a catatonic state.
When her boy tries to talk to his mom, she turns back to him without saying a word. The boy comes back for 2.5 years, day in day out, hoping that one day his mom will open up to him. Finally, one day she speaks. Next day, they have a conversation and she opens up to him. To this day, the boy won’t remember what exactly she told him but still she talked with him.
Life is good.
But unbeknownst to his mom, the boy has suffered, is ailing still. He knows he’s all alone and he befriends books and their kings, prime ministers, and warriors. History’s saints and sinners populate his dreams and nightmares. He builds up a world where War is the Driver and Conflict is the Way of the World.
He becomes a Historian. His analysis is cold and figure driven. He’s a realist. He detests idealism. Emotionally, he’s crippled. He builds crutches. His crutches are his friends he adores. They reel back from his love, not understanding what it means not to be loved. Because they are loved. They have families, loving families after all. They cannot really understand poor old Georgie Porgie, who grows fat and indoctrinated in the Way of History. He can recite the reigns of the kings of Europe from The Roman Empire to the present. But his friends sometimes mock him for his ‘erudition’. They can’t see how he hides his loneliness from a cruel and unforgiving world that sees all and forgives nothing.
He is all alone. But his friends, although bereft of the finer empathic skills of shrinks, detect his trauma, his angst, and come to his rescue. They take him on and help him organize his chaotic mind so that he may ace his college exams. For this, he is forever in their debt. For Georges is anything but a loyal man.
It’s at this point in his existence he realizes he would give his life to save theirs.
Thank you, my friends. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Kim. I love you, my friends and I miss you!
Happy New Year, my friends! Happy New Year, to all of you! Stay Frosty and Loved!
Götterdämmerung 