the price of love

Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow
Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here
It’ll be better than before
Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone
Fleetwood Mac – February 1977

My sister brought Rumours back home with her when she returned from her first job in New York.

We bought the Fleetwood Mac ‘White Album’ the very next week.

To my great delight, over three decades later she’s coming to see the band live with me at London’s Wembley Arena tonight.

Liz has been there, all that time — through good years and bad, in the happy times and the very darkest days of all.

It’s a great skill in life, I think, to be close when you’re needed, whilst standing more tactfully distant when required. And it’ll be quite an evening, drawing that circle around us while fulfilling a lifetime’s ambition together, after all this time.

I thought about this song last week. After its adoption by the Clinton campaign, perhaps I should hesitate to use it, for fear it might seem too politicised now. But the song predates that election by a distance, and it stands up today all the same.

Its message is resolutely, almost brutally optimistic. That however bad life seems, we must always look forwards.

For the bereaved, that kind of advice is awfully hard to accept. When today lies in ruins, how on Earth can you think about the future?

But the hard truth is that time is an unforgivingly linear equation, and it’s in short supply. Finally there is just no getting around it.

So reflect a while on the past, by all means. Let grief do its work. Then find a day, one special day, to gather all your energy around you.

And start from there, to build a new tomorrow.

Yesterday’s gone. So don’t you look back.

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