Feel Good Inc.

Today I want to explore love. When is the strongest you’ve ever felt it and with whom? You might say that person was your mom, your friend, your lover, etc. but truthfully each of those can be transient, ambiguous or arbitrary at best.

Sure we all love our parents to some degree or another. Even those that I’ve known who’ve grown up in the most extreme of situations say that on some level say they still love their parents, but it’s a cautious love tempered with self preservation. They love them because it’s their mom, or their dad, which is about all the definition they might offer.

Early on that love is pure. Some say it’s because a child bonds with at least their mother and relies upon them for survival but really when you were six years old did you honestly understand that without your family you’d have no one to care for you and could be absolutely alone? Maybe you did, but I recall that being about the age I was the first time I considered running away from home. If you didn’t then maybe you’re the exception. Such feelings have been so prevalent in society that Hank Ketchum used the stereotype time and again in his comic strip, "Dennis the Menace." The small child running away from home is the quintessential symbol of youth and innocence running headlong into something they know nothing about or at least understand very little of.

Like the aforementioned character, as children we are self-centered and self indulgent. Our parents place us on a pedestal and make us the center of their universe. Most parents do anyway and for that it becomes easy for the child to take them for granted. Mom or dad will always be there to wipe your nose, give you lunch money and tuck you in at night. As children we are unable to see past our condition and through that we can blame mom and/or dad for every little flaw and ding in our own character. We are after all the products of our environments aren’t we? Usually that’s a grown up way of saying, "Mom and dad didn’t love me enough," or, "They didn’t buy me that puppy/pony/bike/car when I asked for it."

As the child enters prepubescence and on through their teenage years it becomes less and less about the parent and more about the child. Call bullshit all you want but think back on how often you made one or both of your parents cry in those first 18 years. Now barring it being a genuinely abusive situation, how many times did they make you cry and over what? If your answer falls into the puppy/pony/bike/car category you should realize that they most likely anguished over that far more than you did, they just did it in private. If you don’t see that and indeed did make it into those years without being taken from them by DCFS then you’re probably that same self centered and self-indulgent child I mentioned before.

Because most parents keep the suffering of their decisions private from their children, the child is never fully able to realize that their parents have it just as hard, if not worse than they do. They are unable to see the consequence of their words or actions and as such never fully appreciate that their parents have needs, wants and desires of their own.

Here’s a real example. A 14-year-old boy I know was recently asked by his widowed mother how he would feel if she started dating. "I would chase them away," he said. He went on to explain that he liked his current position and was willing to defend it. Inversely his parent will never stop loving him or hold his happiness conditional just as he himself had stated he would. In a healthy parent/child relationship, nothing, not a lover, friend or extended family member will move the child from that position in the parents heart. Not even his siblings who share that space can remove him from it, but they will gladly smack the shit out of you if you keep it up, "toolboy".

Anyway; I know I don’t need to explain the love we have for a friend in the same detail. We may love, care and sacrifice ourselves on occasion for this person, but it’s always tempered by our own self-interests. Even if we put ourselves aside for our friends, it’s done out of our own self-interest. Contrast this with the role of a lover and really there is little difference. Fidelity and honesty must exist in both, just with a lover is the added bonus of the relationship being sexual. Too many confuse this relationship with being, for lack of a better term, true love.

It goes without mention though that all love is true. The only real factor that determines if it’s anything more is its durability. How many close friends or lovers have you had in the past who you wouldn’t care to see or at least be indifferent to if you did see them today? Much less how many close friends or even lovers do you have that you could go days without speaking to?

This doesn’t make their roles any less valuable to you. You know that if you needed something you could call on them and most likely they will be there. It’s not guaranteed that they will, but you know they are there to handle some piece of the issue, in their own time. Especially if you are that same self centered and self indulgent child, you need to remember that your friends have lives and problems of their own and more than likely they will call on you to help with them. Be it friends or lovers, you have to take the good times with the bad. Life is not all rainbows and butterflies.

If it were that way, would life be worth living? For me it’s the negative that helps me appreciate the positives. In retrospect perhaps that’s why I don’t trust people who only reflect what is positive in their lives. The only thing being demonstrated when they show that life is always good is that they won’t be there when times get rough. No one is superhuman and trying to show yourself as being such is just insulting. Those are the real vampires; the members of Feel Good Inc.

So then what is love? There was a time when I thought I had a handle on it. I met and married a woman whom I thought beautiful inside and out, and in retrospect I see how conditional we really were. I now realize that I was still that same self centered and self-indulgent child and so was she. We had everything going on; we were self-sufficient with dual incomes and really no expenses to speak of. Every weekend was something to do as our time was our own. Vacations and amusements were nothing to really think of, we just did them. We were married five years before a brush with death caused us to reconsider keeping our relationship child-free.

In reality and we’ve both discussed it, neither of us knew what love was until we had a child together. Ironically it wasn’t a renewed love for each other, it was a love for this child. It was the only time I actually experienced love at first sight and it’s a bond that defies most rational explanation. Somewhere in one of my boxes is video of me holding her soon after she was born, promising her my world and everything I build in it.

The love a person has for their friend might be somewhere between indifference and a happy conditional acceptance, but the love I have for my daughter is one that borders on obsessive. I’ve talked to other parents and for them it is the same. What’s also the same for them is that it’s unlike any type of love they’ve felt before. To a person without a child, this might sound questionable, but consider this; I already know that I will be the father that scares the crap out of boyfriends and will jealously guard my daughter’s virtue. So far that sounds like the father of most every daughter I’ve dated. How do I know I’ll do this? Because there are two other young ladies for whom I already have. It’s been good practice and I appreciate that they let me be that person to them.

The love a parent has for a child is an absolute, unconditional love. Later in life I’m expecting my daughter to not appreciate me so much as she does now, but I don’t believe I’ll love her less for it and later in life, should I become a burden to her I’ll feel bad for it. She might resent me and maybe even one day say she hates me, but I know I’ll always love her unconditionally. It’s a love that hurts so much the pain becomes exquisite and reminds me that I am alive and that my life has a higher purpose. My life and most all of its related decisions are based on what’s best for her.

Now using that love as a gauge I have an understanding of relationships a bit different than those who are child-free. I love you all, but most no one comes close to how I feel for my daughter. Any of my friends, without hesitation I would step over your body for her and really I would expect you to do the same if it came down to it. That’s a quality most won’t at least express. A few do and for that I appreciate them so much more.

Think about it like this; imagine everything good in your life, your relationships, your possessions, your accomplishments, your feelings for all of that still doesn’t equate to how a parent feels for their child. Now imagine losing all of it. That pain you feel in your gut, like you’ve been eviscerated is still nothing like what a child can make you feel. The only thing that equates to is divorce; pretty small in the grand scheme of things.

A good example happened when I was with my ex-wife. She developed an addiction towards the end of our relationship. I remained loving, supportive and understanding; I wasn’t happy about it but I did it because it’s what I felt to be the right thing to do. The last two years was like beating a dead horse and eventually I decided it was over, as I had no more to give. It wasn’t easy to walk away though it was made easier because I had to fight tooth and nail to keep my daughter. I don’t mean figuratively either, I mean physically like when I was jumped by her and the contents of the crack house I found her at with my child. That was the day I left her, I did it beaten, bloody, bruised and still without my child, but I didn’t give up and in the end I did win. And it was a solid legal victory too.

That is why over the years I’d come to feel the way I did for Cynthia and her daughters. I thought her just as capable of caring for my child as she did her own and believed she sourced her power as a parent from the same place that I still do. Neither of us abused our children and we both had a fairly liberal policy towards them; one of guidance rather than limitation and letting them experience the world about them rather than punishing for doing so. As such my feelings for her and her children were in greater parallel to those I still have towards my daughter, than those I ever felt for Paula in our ten years of her and I being married.

It’s a genuine, healthy emotional state. If it were unhealthy, parenting would be illegal. And it’s just unfortunate that many will go their entire lives oblivious to what I’m talking about.

That’s what the pack mentality is all about. It’s not a loose affiliation of casual acquaintances and conditional relationships and it’s more than just providing food, water and shelter. It’s about correcting behavior contrary to the overall good, guiding in the skills necessary to function in life and being both physically and emotionally available on a moments notice.

Yeah in many ways I still am self-centered and self indulgent, but I’m starting to realize how that factors into my life.