Love lies bleeding

Which is worse, I wonder, having never fallen in love or having fallen in love but been rebuffed? Not having had either experience, I can only conjecture, but I imagine the second would be much more painful.

I find it hard to believe someone could never have fallen in love, but such people do exist. Do they just not have the inclination, or have they never met the particular person who gets their mojo working?

Whatever the reason, if you've never known love, I guess you don't know what you're missing so it's no big deal. On the other hand, if you've fallen for someone but they feel nothing at all for you, that must be very distressing.

But then again, do people who've never fallen in love not know what they're missing? Everywhere they look there are besotted lovers who can't get enough of each other and seem totally blissed out. Don't they think they're being deprived of some vital pleasure in life? Or do they simply think these starstruck lovers are suffering from some psychic delusion? Just seeing a very flawed and ordinary person through rose-tinted glasses?

And is unreciprocated love necessarily distressing? Okay, so the other person doesn't feel the same way, but isn't it fun fancying someone and imagining a red-hot night of passion, even if it never happens? How can what is merely a personal fantasy be distressing if there's not the slightest chance of it turning into reality? Even if there's an element of masochism, an unreal substitute for something more attainable, that's hardly an emotional knifing.

I would have thought love that has actually been reciprocated, even for a short time, would cause a lot more pain than love that's never reciprocated at all. For a while there is that heady prospect that you both feel the same way, that there is that magical symbiosis of affection and understanding that connects your two identities and creates something bigger and better than your individual existence. And then your growing hopes are cruelly dashed as the other person makes it clear they don't feel that subtle communion after all.

All I know is that one way or another love can cause deep anguish as well as profound joy. It's an emotion not to be trifled with, not to be taken lightly.

Escape clause

Calling someone an escapist used to be insulting. It meant they lived in a fantasy world of their own because they couldn't cope with "real life".

Not any more. Nowadays we're all escapists. We all find "real life" so inadequate and frustrating we've got umpteen little worlds of our own that we retreat to at a moment's notice.

If we're not celeb-watchers, we're soap addicts, compulsive readers, armchair philosophers, bloggers, therapy buffs - anything supplying that little extra something that makes life a bit more complete.

Few people still pretend that the everyday routines of housework, car-washing, earning money and paying the bills are what life's all about. Self-maintenance and survival are not enough to make us happy. Of course we need more than that, we need things that express our unique tastes and interests.

Then again, who says all these personal pastimes are escapist? Feeding our minds is as much a part of real life as hoovering or chopping vegetables. We're not escaping from real life, we're adding to it.

And I'm not saying that all these everyday routines are fruitless. Of course a lot of us love cooking, raising children, or the job we do. But nobody thinks any more that that's it, that's life, and anything else is just frivolous nonsense.

More and more, we live in parallel universes. While one part of us is getting through the daily chores, another part is monitoring our other life, anticipating the next soap episode or internet search.

Only trouble is, while we're all so busy with our private indulgences, everyday life is going to pot. While we're updating our Facebook pages or doing our Tai Chi, jobs are disappearing and houses are unaffordable. Real life is screaming for help.

Just imagine

What an advantage it must be to have a really fertile imagination, one that endlessly throws up new ideas without any conscious effort.

My imagination is very sluggish. It comes in random fits and starts. It can be bubbling away furiously for a while and then suddenly it stops dead and refuses to yield anything for hours on end.

This is why I couldn't be a full-time writer. I've tried to write a novel but got total writer's block after around 100 pages. Despite every attempt to get the flow going again, my imagination obstinately failed to cooperate.

Without a constantly freewheeling imagination, I'm often stuck firmly in the prosaic everyday reality, getting bored with the familiar routine but unable to transcend it, unable to drift into a parallel consciousness of tantalising images and scenarios.

I like to think that if I had a fizzing imagination, my life would taken all sorts of spectacular twists and turns that would have transformed it from a fairly predictable middle-class lifestyle to something much more extraordinary.

Not that I'm complaining about how my life has gone, far from it, but I'm sure the strength of our imagination can make a big difference to the richness and vitality of our lives.

Of course imagination has also been responsible for some of the worst horrors of human existence - nuclear bombs, Nazism, torture, slavery - but if we had no imagination at all, the world would be a grim and oppressive place indeed. Change would be impossible. We would be frozen in a permanent Stone Age.

Imagine that.