All You Need...

...an excruciating moment - though not realised as such until long after the moment - was having a personal request read out at a school assembly. Losing somehow a treasured possession, it was granted that a master would make a public appeal to the gathered oiks.

"Has anyone seen," the master intoned. "The popular music single - by that inescapable combo - what was it again Palladas Maj? Ah yes 'All You Need Is Love'. An entirely misguided and deviant view I must say, but then when were my sound views on life ever heeded?"

Howls of mocking laughter rent the Hall. All one needs is love? Oh ho, ho we chuckled - myself included naturally to hide my shame. As if that were all we cried - unknowing adolescents, who nothing knew of love and so very little of life.

I never did recover the disk. Some fiend would have nicked it and kept it for himself. But I did learn not to refer to love as the guiding, dominating universal force until and unless sure of my ground and my audience.

Pal. Min (Bro. George that is) though not directly caught up in this little farce has been similarly affected in life. He too will give a wide berth to any notion that love - howsoever defined - is the thing. Best not go there and all that.

So imagine then my surprised delight, or call it delighted surprise, to receive this very telephone call from said emotionally constipated Bro.

He had, it seems, been running one of his training courses - like he does - and being a wizened old trainer not missing any trick had asked his audience early doors to have a chat about 'core values' and 'principles' and so forth. It's a standard way - I am told - of getting them to feel good about themselves and - thence - good about whatever the subject in hand.

Taking 'feedback' as one does, Bro. George had asked people to sing out some phrases, words, thoughts, etc. The norm would be such matters as 'empowerment', 'choice', 'rights', 'dignity' and so forth. All good stuff in themselves of course but essentially utterly predictable.

What, though, happened on this occasion had the Bro. very nearly on his knees and most certainly on the phone this evening to me. For a nurse - spotted from the off as intelligent yet as hard-boiled as any long-serving professional - has been the first to cry out.

"Love," she said. "That should be at the very heart of all that we do. That is not all we need, but if we have not love then we have nothing."

I fully can understand why the Bro. needed to tell me this tonight. And I fully understand and accept why both of us were not, as we spoke, a little tearful at the sheer wonderment of it.

Can there be such people who, having spent thirty or more years enslaved to the grinding system that is our health service, can still emerge with that passionate belief in the central significance of why anyone does what they do?

Yes it seems, there are.

And thank the Lord of Love for that. For He is indeed all we need. Amen.