Scarborough Fair

Only the other day, while driving into town, I heard this old, familiar song on the radio. One of my most cherished songs actually: Scarborough Fair. And in a Constable landscape I saw them, Mary and Tom, on their way to the market, the fair. 
Even though I saw figures in old fashioned Thomas Hardy-style garments, I could not precisely imagine what they looked like, dark or fair, tall, frail or sturdy. But you know, it didn’t really matter, because somehow, in those two, I saw a multitude of people. Thousands of Mary’s and Tom’s or whatever their names are.
For as long as history can recall, girls and boys, men and women have gone to fairs and markets all over the world. And among the crowd they suddenly saw him, her… and their eyes lit up.
And with words and smiles they invited one another to become part of their lives: let’s build a house, grow a crop, run a shop together; let’s make babies, be a family, grow old together. They bond and we call that bond ‘love’.
With millions of others like them they weave the fabric of life, simply by doing what all life forms do. They eat, breathe, grow, sleep, move, procreate.
People spend their lives together. And life not just understood as the timespan between birth and death, but life as the result of how that timespan is filled. Life as the outcome of your unique way of being here, contributing to life, sustaining, beautifying life while living it. How awesome, how truly wonderful it is when you meet among the thousands that one person to do your living with.
And yes, you live the way all life forms live, do the things we all do, eat, sleep, work, wash clothes and dishes, cuddle the young ones, care for the weak, bake cakes, knit sweaters, chop wood, write books or read them. And although our lives may seem trivial, even a bit meaningless sometimes, the fuel and the flame underneath all this living is love. The love that started the moment we saw her, him… and our eyes lit up.
Even though we do not feel it all the time, this love is our drive. This love gives meaning and purpose to our lives, and to all the – supposedly – simple everyday things we do. We don’t grow the crops for nothing. We grow them to feed our loved ones and those who depend on us. We build homes to keep our families warm and safe, schools for our kids to learn and become fine young men and women – hopefully at least a bit wiser than we are.
We build hospitals for those of us who need care, shelters for those who need protection from whatever dangers, sometimes from themselves. Halls and churches to meet in good times or bad, to experience we’re not alone, that we are in this together, to commemorate and celebrate our bonds of friendship and love.
Yet there are people – same planet, same species – who somehow feel the urge to tear these bonds apart. Who bomb cities, burn down crops, blow up hospitals, starve babies, separate parents from children, women from men, and even manage to come up with a very valid reason to do so. With what right?
We are all meant, no exceptions, to partake in this exciting enterprise together. We are all designed to contribute to the advancement of this ‘Big Everything’, or at least sustain it. Then where does one human get the idea that it is okay to ruin the house another human built, to hurt another human’s child, to rape another human’s sister, to murder another human’s father, brother, friend?
What is so annoying about people’s lives and the way they live it, that other people feel compelled to put an end to it? What can be so wrong with people’s love, that other people feel justified to destroy it? While all the time being involved in the same project, all of us together. Having the same work to do, the same air to breath, the same soil to share and the same stars to gaze at. All of us together, no exceptions.
Then where does this weird, this delusional idea of having such a right come from?