The case for… Live, laugh, love

Live, laugh, love. The tip of the tongue taking a trip down the palate, to tap, at three, on a throw. Or scatter cushion, or piece of driftwood. Is this the most merchandised slogan ever? Apart from Happy Birthday? Happy birthday might have a tune, but it ain’t got no poetry. Live, laugh, love on the other hand, is a miracle of compression. A symphony packed into a single sigh.

People who don’t like living/laughing/loving will say it is a platitude, trotted out to the point of meaninglessness. We should find our own words, they sniff, our own philosophy. Pure defensiveness. In extremity, do we not all reach for borrowed language - for poetry, song or psalm, to express tectonic feeling? Our depths are communal, in the way no country owns the seabed.

The words frequently ornament mirrors in soulless Airbnbs. That doesn’t make them banal. That’s like saying you don’t love your husband, because there are other Trevors in the world. You do, though, have to fill the phrase with the particularities of your experience. What is your life for? What does your time boil down to? If you come up with a better manifesto, go make a million. If you come to the throw with nothing, nothing will be thrown in your face. A cushion can’t say: ‘Remember the time Lisa was so drunk she ate pot pourri? And you wet yourself, then kissed?’ That simply wouldn’t be commercial. It’s too long.

The cushion’s invitation is to meditate on the eternal significance of such events. We are all simple creatures, yet unfathomable. Loosen your grip. Let these huge, tiny words carry you, bobbing over a mystery, like driftwood.