Playing Best Together
Dear [Mentat],
Now, continuing the arguments for steadfast dedication to relationships and little else besides shared endeavors, let me say that my brief experience with the Lions Club has introduced me to many couples from around PA, who have been married for three to five decades. While we can’t know what goes on behind closed doors, in public at least, most of them seem very happy and enjoy participating in Lions activities together.
Now I’ve gotten to know four of these couples. They don’t spend much time apart. Whatever their external interests, except for reading perhaps, they share together. Whenever I’ve asked them to drive me somewhere, they both come along. Rarely does one appear without the other at an event. They speak of their happy times, and help each other lovingly. When they are apart, they talk much about the other’s accomplishments. They need each other, but in a good way. They comfort each other and help one another through life’s difficulties and fears. They don’t come across as being obsessed with each other, because their obsessions in that vein were satisfied long ago. More on this below, where I discuss Maslow’s Triangle. They each know implicitly that the other loves them, and this state of affairs drives away the insecurities that fuel much obsession. A lifetime of dedication to each other seems to have made them better off as individuals, ironically.
We need not thirst for water to know its necessity. As long as the thirst remains quenched, we’re free to go about our lives as we desire, largely unencumbered by that thirst. However, we’d best provision to keep ourselves irrigated, lest we become parched and unable to focus on anything else but more water – lest we become obsessed. The absence of thirst can by no means be construed as an absence of need. Rest assured that the one who appears to have no thirst for love, [probably] still needs it, and probably has a source of it that you don’t know about.
Good relationships are much like this, as exemplified by these Lions Club couples. Healthy love satisfies a genetically evolved thirst for a productively advantageous mate. While the absence of love is not as dire as a missing water bottle in the desert, it can nonetheless, likewise compel us to dedicate efforts to get love, just like being thirsty motivates us to seek water above all else. These Lion couples however, are not thirsty. Each participant in the couple respects and does whatever he can to fulfill her emotional, mental, and physical needs. They rely upon and trust each other implicitly to do that, and as long as each does her part, the individual strength the lovers derive from the other is astounding.
You’ve heard the saying that behind every great man is a great woman, and vice versa. The great person does not thirst for adoration, because he has an assured and abundant supply of it, and so his mind is free to focus on issues of world importance – issues outside the relationship that sustains him. Paul McCartney, Ronald Reagan, Dr. Phil, The Bushs’, and so many others all have wives dedicated to them and their happiness. Dr. Phil’s wife appears with him on every show, a testimonial to the notion that there are women supremely dedicated to their men and families out there, and that relationships overflowing with this dedication can indeed work well. Linda McCartney learned to play the keyboard so she could be with Paul and help in his performances with Wings. Most CEOs and other high achievers are married. In fact, people live longer, healthier, more productive lives on the whole, who do not live them without lovers. In this way, dedication to relationships first can actually help one achieve renown in external pursuits, rather than hinder him. Devotion does not always thwart Worldly. In fact, it may be a precursor to worldly pursuits, as discussed next.
Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” triangle shows that social needs (the need to be loved, belonging, and inclusion) are lower in the hierarchy than the needs of self actualization (the needs for development and creativity and worldly pursuits). His theory suggests that the lower level needs must be satisfied first, before the higher level needs become high priority. That is, we don’t worry about solving world hunger until we’ve satiated our own hunger. Indeed, the emptiness I’ve spoken of after promotions at [work], likely happened because I was trying to fulfill ego needs (those of self-esteem, power, recognition, prestige), before the lower-level social needs were met. Extrapolating from my own experiences as well as The Triangle, it’s foolish to attempt self actualization until our love needs are met.
Now, back to our happy Lions Club couples, they want not for love, not because they’ve mastered the ability to stand alone, but rather, because they accept just how crucial to their overall success a good lover is. They embrace the concept, and were lucky enough to find it. The love that surrounds them enables them to achieve their excellence, as per The Triangle. Indeed, gratification in love is the foundation of self actualization needs. Their relationship does not retard them in those higher level pursuits so long as they give it its due. In this light, a relationship is a necessary step to achieving world-class excellence in any other pursuit, and is a big reason for me to be devoted to getting love.
I’d like to achieve great things both within and outside a relationship, and as discussed previously, tried to do so without love, but couldn’t really. I want to achieve greatness, but only after I achieve love. I understand today that my need for love is more immediate than that for career or hobbies. As noted, I feel that the right woman would eliminate the emptiness I noticed when achieving at [work]. In those days, if I’d had a warm bed to come home to, a nice meal prepared by loving female hands, and a lady to be proud of me who would boast of me to her friends where I could hear her, the victories at work would have meant more.
Now it may sound like I’ve been favoring fierce dedication to love instead of Worldly pursuits as a life philosophy. But let me clarify that. I didn’t mean to suggest that there’s no place for worldly pursuits. I just think that before one can concentrate whole-hog on them, he must first satisfy his love lust, as inferred from Maslow’s Triangle. The time for world-class excellence comes after those needs are satisfied, not before, and not during the love quest, but only once love is won.
With all that said, obsessive focus on relationships is often shunned by Worldlys, as a behavior that healthy people do not display. However, particularly prior to, as well as early in a new romance, obsession with the relationship is normal, and well. When asked what their relationships were like when they were younger, these Lions Club couples tell of pining, particularly early on, when their beloved’s affections were unsure. Uncertainty about when or where the first kiss would come heightened their preoccupation with the romance. But once the couples grew close and actually exchanged that first kiss, that intense concern vanished, and along with it, excess obsession over the relationship in general. While some overly righteous, “healthy” people exalt themselves by claiming to have purged their longings for love through some form of mind control like meditation or indulging heavily in unrelated pursuits, I say not so fast. After all, the vast majority of us have these cravings, yearnings which are built into us by evolutionary design, just like our water thirst. The most well-adjusted person stands strong because he’s satisfied his cravings for love by actually finding it, not by renouncing it and learning to function well without it.
Of course, not all cravings are alike. That is, while it wouldn’t be good to satisfy a craving for illicit drugs by seeking them out, other cravings, such as that for love, can only be fully eliminated by obtaining and keeping the object of desire. Not all cravings are bad. The craving for love does not carry the same harmful consequences as say, the cravings for excess food, tobacco, and other vices. So we can’t say that love lust is bad just because it bears some of the same earmarks as those cravings that lead to bad ends. Unlike the bad cravings, that for love is a good one, because it’s realization will actually improve a life.
