Okay, so here's
how it works from your point of view. It may be helpful to listen
up, since there's a great deal of confusion on this point out there
in human-being land. Or it might not be helpful, because maybe you don't
care. Regardless, here we go.
Once you're born,
your little brain stem neurons start searching for information as to
whether that Unconditional Mother Love is anywhere in evidence, using
sound, touch, food, and even vibe. If it is, they say to themselves
'ah, excellent! the world wants me here. I have entered a Welcoming
Environment with sufficient resources to facilitate my continued growth
and development, leading I sincerely hope to my own eventual production
of infants like myself. Good deal!' And they snuggle in happily.
If that Unconditional
Mother Love is not in evidence they say to themselves one of two things.
The first, more drastic option is 'Well, this is certainly not a Welcoming
Environment. There are obviously not enough resources to make a sojourn
on this planet worth my while. I don't have a bat's chance in hell.
I'm outta here.' And the little cells signal the body to pack up its
shit and depart for heaven. Or at least death. This is called Failure
to Thrive and even infants have a suicide option if things don't look
promising enough. This happens.
What happens more
commonly though is that the cells say to themselves: "hmmm...this
looks dicey. I think I have a shot, but I will have to go to Plan B.
This is not exactly the Welcoming Enviroment I had hoped for. Resources
are uncomfortably scarce and therefore I need to adapt to this Not Exactly
Welcoming Environment by calling upon a multitude of backup tricks to
facilitate my survival without the presence of that Unconditional Mother
Love that would have saved me a lot of trouble. Damn!"
And so these cells
signal the body - pull out Bag O'Survival Tricks and adapt to Not Exactly
Welcoming Environment. And so you, my poor unloved person, does just
this. The Bag O'Tricks is huge and the chances are good you will rifle
through it randomly throughout your life pulling out whatever seems
like it might work in the moment, depending on circumstances. You might
cry more as an infant, so that if your mother is not motivated by love
to feed and care for you, maybe she'll be motivated by the desire to
shut you up.
You may expend great
energy trying to produce Unconditional Love chemicals in your mother
by other means such as trying to please her to up the chemical quotient
to a more reassuring level. You may go to great lengths to hide your
mother's lack of love, lest others detect that they have an evolutionary
survival advantage and try to use it against you. You may repeatedly
practice signaling distress in hopes of gaining assistance from others
who could help compensate for your lack of Unconditional Love. You may
seek UL from others. You may get depressed so that you will be less
active and therefore place less strain on a resource-deprived environment.
You may pretend your mother loves you, even when you know she doesn't,
at least not unconditionally. You may get real crabby or even majorly
aggressive so that if people aren't going to love you at least they
will be afraid of you and therefore disinclined to mess with you.
You will do,
in fact, anything and everything the entire software package in your
head can think of to do. And most of the time the software package
will not ask your permission to do these things, because survival is
at stake and there is no fucking way your software package is going
to wait around until the memo from your conscious self gets approved
and routed to all the department heads. It just gets busy keeping you
alive.
So this all makes
sense. The real reason for Unconditional Love, from your point of view,
is survival advantage. As an infant, it would be insane for you to try
to convince the people around you to expend tremendous effort and energy
to keep you alive by means of a PowerPoint presentation in which
you explain that you have an idea for an innovative electronic gadget
that will eventually make your mother rich. Ain't gonna work!
If the Unconditional
Mother Love survival advantage doesn't materialize, your body merely
signals itself that it is missing and takes all the appropriate corrective
measures it can think of. This is great! This is clever. There is
only one thing wrong with this from your point of view.
And that is that
there is no Automatic Off Switch for the I Don't Seem to Be Getting
Unconditional Love in this Not Exactly Welcoming Environment. Left to
its own devices, this switch will stay on your entire life and you will
spend your entire life thinking, out loud or silently to yourself 'I
just want Unconditional Love! Is that so wrong?!' And so on. Your body
will continue to register a deficit long long long past infancy. In
many way, this is not so great.
One of the reasons
there is no Automatic Off Switch is because Unconditional Love is a
handy survival advantage to have at any time. Leaving the switch on
motivates you to seek such Unconditional Love throughout your life,
frequently in a desperate, pathetic, and unsuccessful manner. Unconditional
Love is hard to produce in people who have not undergone very severe
stress - and while this isn't your fault, it does make your desperate
quest for Unconditional Love more difficult.
The cure for
this is for your brain stem neurons to get their greedy little receptors
on some Unconditional Love. Everyone knows this. Everyone who experiences
a deficit murmurs to themselves, sometimes subconsciously, 'how can
I get my greedy little receptors to experience some Unconditional Love?'
This is why people all over the goddamn globe go rushing towards God,
shouting 'Love me! Love Me! Love me!' in one form or another. This is
why people all over the globe search greedily for Unconditional Love
in romantic liaisons or even from their kids or pets. Everyone wants
that shit!
So here's the deal.
The God strategy is not exactly a bad strategy, although it doesn't
100% necessarily require an actual god as depicted in myth and story
to participate. Because the thing is, if you survived long enough to
be able to read this, evolution already loves you unconditionally.
That whole Mother
Love thing was basically just to help you get through that trying infancy
and young childhood thing without kicking the bucket. And you did!
Evolution is so proud of you it could pop!
Do not be surprised
if shortly after you actually die, you find yourself dragged to all
kinds of Alternate Universe conventions by doting Evolutionary Parent
figures who trot you out to all the other Universes to show how well
their process works. You will be asked to attend numerous PR events
(free food!) while evolution presents slides of your life history -
'No Mother Love and yet she survived just fine! Look at her! Isn't she
great! Try doing that in your alternate universes without evolution.
Not so easy, is it?'
In fact, evolution
is so fiendishly clever, it wouldn't completely surprise me if it arranged
to have you reincarnated multiple times in adverse circumstances just
because you're such a superior example of survival skills and adapatability
that evolution hates to see you go to waste. Doesn't that sound
like fun?
See, the thing is,
there is a natural tendency to feel, on at least some level, as though
people who got Unconditional Mother Love are better, less defective,
or at least lucky. But they aren't really. The Unconditional
Mother Love they got doesn't have anything to do with them.
Surviving
without it, however, has everything to do with you. You have
already accomplished everything UML was intended to do for you - survive
past the age of 7. The Universe, which didn't seem all that welcoming
at first, is now besotted with you and now wants nothing more than to
send you little love notes where it admits it has a crush on you.
Sometimes it is
fairly obvious that the universe has a tendency towards greater affection
to those who have survived adversity, because some of these people radiate
Universal goodness even when they are trying hard not to. Sometimes
it is not the least bit obvious. Still, as far as I can tell, this is
the general rule, although exceptions definitely apply.
You may be in dire
straits right this very moment - but they are not caused by lack
of Unconditional Mother Love. They may be caused by the habitual
adaptations your body made to the Not Exactly Welcoming Environment;
they may be caused by the defensiveness your body has naturally adopted
for safety's sake and is now a bit intimidated to drop. You may be shoveling
drugs into your body to shield yourself from getting all freaked out
over not having a survival advantage that would have been good to have
earlier. But they are not caused by the lack of love itself.
You're fine.
You're absolutely 100% fine. You're better than fine. You are now the
one with a survival advantage because you are accidentally familiar
with a Bag o'Survival Tricks. You have survival experience. If you become
a homeless alcoholic with no bowel control it will be either because
you have terrible alcohol-seeking, non-bowel controlling genes, or because
you failed to pay attention and realize that you are absolutely fine!
It is good to realize
this on an intellectual level, because lots of people don't. Not surprising
really. But realizing it on an intellectual level is not going to help
your brain stem a great deal because your brain stem is actually
not very intellectual!
So you have to convince
your brain stem. This is why God is not exactly a bad strategy. Because
it's more or less accurate, although people manage to come up with a
lot of embellishments that are not really on point. But the underlying
principle still holds. The Universe still loves you; it's still impressed
you survived, it's still in your corner shouting 'you go, girl!' That's
just the way it is. You succeeded in evolutionary terms - evolution
is impressed! It's got no choice.
You just have to
convince your brain stem of this. Now evolution is not exactly a cuddly
mom substitute (and sometimes god isn't either), so you will need to
jigger this abstract concept around until it makes an impression on
your brain stem.
Send yourself e-cards
'Dear Laura, just wanted you to know we're thinking of you. You're so
great! Love and kisses always, Your Friends from Evolution.' Buy yourself
a teddy bear with a sash imprinted 'Tad's #1 Fan! Evolution
says You Rock!' Send yourself flowers with little notes 'Just remember
I will always be here for you - Your Evolutionary Survival Bag O'Tricks'.
Get yourself a fuzzy, soft warm little kitty and name her Evolution.
Buy a yelping pair of joyous dogs and name them something similar. Purchase
very old romantic songs so that evolution can croon that it gets no
kick from champagne, but it gets a kick out of you.
Do whatever you
need to do. Treat yourself the way your mother would have treated you
if her chemicals had been working right. Slather yourself with UL. Make
shit up about the universe being in your corner, peforming annoying
cheerleading stunts (2, 4, 6, 8, who do we appreciate? You! You! You!),
hiring mariachi bands to serenade you - and then pretend it's real.
Find God. Bewilder your brain stem neurons until they are completly
disoriented and forced to admit maybe they should change their attitude.
This isn't cheating.
It feels like cheating because the original purpose was for your brain
stem to gather information about the outside environment and adapt accordingly.
So people continue to think they need to look to the environment to
give them the all clear. But you already did that. You already adapted.
You already passed the test. You are the lucky one - because
something must have gone right or you wouldn't have made it this far
in the face of a survival disadvantage.
Strangely, this
applies even if you accidentally pulled Doing Terrible Things out of
your Evolutionary Bag o'Survival Tricks. You need to inform your brain
cells that you have already survived at this point so they can say 'Oh
my god! We survived! I'm so relieved! Now I don't have to do Terrible
Things anymore. I'm so happy because that was no fun! Thank god that's
over - a round of happy chemicals on everyone, from me!'
If tihngs go well
during this process (they might) your brain stem will actually figure
out how to identify love in the environment, now that it has some clue
as to what it feels like. It may notice - oh look! Laura (or Joe, or
Kinsey or whoever the hell) is affecting someone else's chemicals -
and that's producing love! Who'd a thunk? I was half inclined to believe
we couldn't effect anyone - because we sure didn't get very far with
Mom! But apparently I was wrong! Maybe it was Mom's chemical problem
and not mine! This puts a whole new light on things.' And so on.
Half the goddamn
trick to life is getting your body to update itself with new information
as it occurs. If you don't politely inform it that you are no longer
less than 7 years of age, it will sit there sluggishly convinced that
you are. The body is a wary thing. It's reluctant to put itself
out on a limb and make assumptions that your mother or anyone else loves
you if this will cause it to let down its survival guard.
But once you're
past the age of 7, there's no actual survival disadvantage to dosing
your brain stem with UL chemicals. You don't have to convince yourself
that your actual mother loves you if she is in reality a paranoid schizophrenic
plotting to stab you in retribution for the 'devils in the toaster'
who demand a blood sacrifice. That would be foolish and self-delusional.
Many people try it because their brains stems believe
so strongly in the advantage of mother love. But you can skip that step.
And go straight to pretending that the Universe is a hell of a lot more
welcoming and glad to see you, now that you've proven how superior you
are by surviving to the age of 8.
You can pretend
you know what it feels like to have your life or your brain stem feel
a lot better because in a way you actually do. Your brain stem wouldn't
be registering the lack of UML if it didn't have some idea what it was
supposed to feel like. This is just one of those situations where you
have to take your body firmly in hand and tell it what to do so that
it will cut short its own tendency to get grumpy, sulk, and refuse to
improve your life.
You don't even have
to get mad at your mother while doing this (don't worry, you can get
mad at her for other things). She didn't fuck you up in this way
because you're not actually fucked up. Your brain stem neurons
are in pain and making periodic dramatic announcements about dying
without love, but there is no actual reason for you to die at this point.
They are operating out of old information. Inform them of this by giving
them gifts of chocolate, taking them out to dinner, and leaving $5 bills
in their pockets occasionally. Even a brain stem that turns its nose
up at chocolate can't resist finding $5 in its pocket occasionally!
You will win it over immediately.
All right, none
of this will work probably, but it can't hurt - particularly the chocolate.
Worth a try.
Meanwhile, you actually
already knew your mother was supposed to provide unconditional love.
Everyone knows that. So you are severely disappointed to have
gotten this far and learned absolutely nothing new!
This means it is
now necessary to go the next page in the wistful hope that there will
be some new and useful information on it. The chances are not good -
but what choice do you have?
Back to your mom...and
more ways things can go horribly wrong...
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