How to Be Happy Without Love

 The Fight for happiness

Alia had some good understanding that I cared for her. For the next couple of days she then kept me updated of the course of her journey back home. After that, I did not hear from her for a while. I also shared the belief, I should not disturb her. I thought I understood she needed to rest; not just physically, but, above all, emotionally. I therefore believed I should leave her alone. Alia, on her last message before going offline, also said we would talk sometime, but did not know well when; she needed time to think. That has always seemed to me like the best approach: to allow us much time as needed to carefully think important matters over. I am completely convinced the concept of intelligence is greatly overstated. From my point of view, the process whereby a good idea is produced does not depend that much on a 'bright mind' (whatever that is), but is generally more a matter of putting enough time and energies thinking about the problem at hand. In that sense, I have always loved Prof. Wei-Min Shen's advice during the last session of our orientation week upon my arrival to USC at the beginning of my Ph.D. studies. Some student had explained he was totally overwhelmed with work and very stressed: he asked for some advice on how to go about it. Prof. Shen recognized students generally have to face a lot of work and are subject to a lot of stress; however, he also believed it is always important to set aside some time to relax and enjoy yourself. As he pointed out, the key to reconcile these apparently conflictive views was to get started on the assignment early. That would allow the problem to get into your mind. Once there, it would be OK to go watch a movie, if that is what you feel like doing. The beauty of Prof. Shen's recipe is that, while you are enjoying yourself watching that movie, the solution to your homework assignment will be slowly and nicely cooked at low heat on the back of your mind. In the years that followed, as I conducted my neuroscientific research, I found Prof. Shen's advice to be correct or, at least, consistent with how the brain works. Indeed, if we think of our consciousness as the chief cook of a restaurant, her intervention will certainly be necessary in all the crucial steps of any recipe. However, there will be as well many tasks that can be completed or advanced without her. Consequently, while she is relaxing watching a movie, many other people can start making progress in the kitchen's back room: cleaning, cutting, heating, etc. Then, by the time the movie finishes, everything will be ready for the chief cook to give her magic touch.

The way I saw it back then, the ball was on Alia's court. I certainly had not done anything wrong; quite the opposite, I had been betrayed. It had been Alia who had betrayed me and hurt me very deeply. We had now become separated, because Alia had started to believe I was a burden to her and she would otherwise have to drag me around the supermarkets for the rest of her life. However, I could guess that the real reason had been that she had stupidly fallen in love with Gary, and it had been him who had engrained in her mind the idea that I was a pathetic, useless, blind man. But, as a matter of fact, I was the same person who she used to love just one and a half months earlier, and I was certainly perfectly able to take care of myself, as I was back then. Moreover, the fact that Alia had got so perturbed, when I told her the week earlier I was going to cook for myself or go to the supermarket by myself, casted further doubts those were the real reasons why she had stopped loving me.

The good news for us were that she had now left Gary thousands of miles away. Whether she liked it or not, she could not have Gary and she would have to get over him. It was clear to me Alia had lost contact with reality, but she could not forever live out of Gary's fantasy. So, sooner rather than later she would have to wake up. At that point she would have to decide whether she would want to come back to her marriage or would rather prefer to continue on her own. On my end, my decision on that question was clear. Contrary to most people's advice, I have always been convinced six years of marriage should weight far more than a minute of stupidity. Therefore it

would only be dumb to allow a minute of irrational behavior to ruin, all in all, six wonderful years of marriage. 

 

It then seemed to me Alia's choice was also really straightforward. Not only I had not done anything wrong and I was no burden to her, but now I was even ready to forgive her for her betrayal. So, if Alia had been happy in her marriage two months earlier, there was no reason why she would not want to come back, once she regained contact with reality. 

The bad news for me, however, were that Gary had sent Alia back to the worst of her teenage years. I knew well that Alia, in her teenage mood, could be very stubborn and totally uncapable to accept 'No' as an answer. It was then, to begin with, questionable to what extent Alia was going to be ready to accept the fact that she could not have Gary. But, more importantly, by all accounts she appeared to have fallen into some Dr. Jeckyll Vs. Mr. Hyde polarity. While this was not quite new for her, the real concern was that this time the driving force and dominant personality was Mr. Hyde. I was certainly familiar with Alia's flashes of anger, but there were that: flashes. They were tough to endure while they lasted, but the next day they would be over. Then, Alia's good demon would regain control, reprimend her bad demon and, globally, Alia would feel remorseful for a while.

I think in order to understand how the brain works, it is useful to consider the parallelisms with the government of a nation. Like in any government, our brain has an area responsible for executive control which takes decisions for the whole organism. Indeed, our consciousness serves in a way like the president of the nation. Moreover, like in the brain, all governments have several departments or ministries, each concerned with one aspect of the nation's activity or state. The list of departments and their specific names obviously vary from one country to another, however usually we find a department of health, a department of food, a department of foreign affairs, a department of defense, a department of finance and economy, a department of education, a department of labor, etc. Needless to say, in our brains we also have many driving forces watching for equivalent aspects of our well-being; like our health, our need for food, our need to stay warm and safe, our relationship with others and our need for love, our constant desire to learn and grow intellectually, our need to find some good way to allocate our energies, etc. Like in any government, our consciousness, hopefully based on the inputs it receives from all the drives of our mind, determines the priority of each of our goals and needs, and decides on a course of action. Now, while we all find it easy to agree that Mr. President is not usually the smartest guy around, there is the fundamental misunderstanding whereby we unquestionably take our consciousness as the crest of our intelligence, like if the neurons that produce our abstraction of consciousness would somehow be the brightest in our brain. Clearly, there is no indication that this may be the case, since there is no basis to argue that one neuron may be 'smarter' than another. More precisely, scientific studies of neural recordings suggest the prefrontal cortex is associated with executive control and therefore believed to be involved in our sense of consciousness. However, there is no basis to argue that our prefrontal cortex is made up of the smartest neurons around. On the other hand, it seems more than reasonable to assume that the process whereby many networks of neurons interact with each other to converge and produce an optimal plan of action, should be extremely complex. Pure observation of people's decisions and behaviors then suggests that our counsciousness, like Mr. President, does not always put enough care or simply allow enough time to reliably and accurately ponder all inputs to come up with a good course of action. In colloquial terms, we do not always think carefully or simply do not spent enough time considering all the information available before taking decisions on what is best for us. Furthermore, the same way that governments sometimes change president, our brains also experience every now and then changes in personality. Then, under a given personality we may take a tougher or softer position on certain aspects of our life, or may prioritize some drives over others.

That is how I saw what had happened to  Alia: Mr. Hyde had thrown Dr. Jeckyll out of office and had now taken control of the presidency. That was really bad news, because Mr. Hyde was basically an asshole. More specifically, in what referred to me, Mr. Hyde had a much tougher and more aggressive position on 'foreign policy'. In other words, Mr. Hyde was Alia's bad demon's mastermind and, therefore, responsible for all those anger attacks Alia had put me through in the past. Back then, when Alia's good demon was in charge, those anger attacks only lasted until Alia's good demon was able to stop her bad demon's encroachment and put it back in its place. In fact, Alia's good demon had a softer position on 'foreign policy', since it understood it was not worth hurting our marriage just to get some fancy. However, if now Alia's bad demon was in charge, I needed to expect our relationship to become far more complicated; since I was now going to get the blame for anything.

If Gary had send Alia back to the worst of her teenage years, that meant that all the efforts we had made at the beginning of our relationship had been undone. When Alia was an immature adolescent, she learned she only needed to make a tantrum to get her way. She knew her mother would always concede, in order for her to stop screaming and become sweet again. That, however, was obviously really short-sighted; because everytime Robyn conceded, she was also rewarding and reinforcing her daughter's capricious and immature behavior. If Alia stopped resorting on tantrums to get her way, was simply because they would not work with me anymore. I pledged to myself, I would never submit, just so that she would stop screaming. It then seemed now clear to me it would be a recipe for disaster to reward Alia's betrayal and reinforce her bad demon's mean and tyrannic position, by desperately crying and begging her to come back with me. Instead I thought I should wait for her to show some kind of remorse; but once she had done so, it was really crucial I wrap her in all the love and support she needed. 

Needless to say, Alia was not in anything of the above. As a matter of fact, the scene looked completely differently from Alia's perspective. As her emails show, the whole affaire with Gary had been a real trauma for Alia, and all what mattered to her now was the immense emotional pain she was now feeling. As a matter of fact, in what referred to me, it was even worse, because Alia actually blamed me for it. The way she saw it, I was responsible for her pain, because it had been me who had made her feel that way, that Sunday afternoon on the beach, when I reminded her of all those times she had hurt me, and had, therefore, depicted her as an awful person. The main problem now for me was that, if she saw me as the origin of her pain, she was obviously not going to want to listen to me nor trust any help I may try to offer. It is true that Alia did still feel very remorseful for her marriage's failure; but it turned out that further played against me, since that only added to the pain she felt.   

Moreover, Gary had indeed wiped Alia's mind out and, as a result, she had not only lost contact with reality, but also completely forgotten all the love and dreams we used to shared until just one month and a half earlier. As a matter of fact, Gary had completely destroy the image Alia had of me and convince her that I was a pathetic, useless, blind man. Unfortunately, I did not realize Alia was not going to be able to remember by herself all what we had shared; but she needed help bringing those memories back alive. I felt confident thinking that her marriage had always been a fundamental part of her life. Hence, even if she did not quite love me anymore, the security her marriage brought her, the desire to have children and still the endless, beautiful memories of six wonderful years together, would sooner or later pull everything back together. But I was failing to understand that Alia's whole world had been shaken and there was nothing certain on it anymore.

Now, with me out of the picture and she distrusting any help which may come from me, Alia was going to rely on other people to find some relief from the deep pain she felt. In that sense, I knew Robyn could play a critical role and I was not quite sure how to feel about that. It just takes to skim through the affidavits Robyn wrote for Immigration, to set the record straight on to what extent Robyn knew perfectly well, how fundamental it was for Alia her relationship with me and how she would brake down everytime we separated. I was hoping that Alia's well-being would be paramount to her mother. If that was going to be the case, then, if anything at all, Robyn would encourage her daughter to talk things over with the man Alia had always loved, the man who had always loved and cared for her, but she had betrayed for some asshole playboy. However, I knew well Alia's parents havve always hated the fact that she had married me and I could still remember Robyn hissing at me, I had ruined the relationship with her daughter. That cold morning of February 2015 that we left for Africa, Robyn asserted to me at the airport, she knew well I loved and would take good care of Alia. She was also very proud of all what her daughter had accomplish during her marriage. But I was not sure to what extent Robyn was going to be able to get over the blame that I had ruined the relationship with her daughter. I was very concerned how that was now going to play out. I did not know at that time, but a few years earlier, Alia had written from Italy a very severe letter to her mother. I could imagine that letter had hurt her very deeply and it is doubtful she would ever want to forgive us for it. I certainly feared Robyn would not want to miss the opportunity she had been waiting for so long to take her child back from me.

Robyn was indeed about to have to decide whether she was going to accept King Solomon's offer to take just half of the baby, or she would prioritize her baby's wellbeing and do everything to put it back together, even if that meant to see it go with somebody else. It may seem an overexageration, but that was exactly what was about to happen. Alia was coming back heartbroken and broken-down from South Africa, walking away from everything that had filled her life and made her happy for the previous six years. It was now up to Robyn to grasp the opportunity to regain posession over her runaway daughter, or she would want to look after her wellbeing and try to help Alia undo the actions, which had brought her to her state of depression.

From what Alia told me, it seems like Robyn had got from her mother some kind of complex, that she was not very intellectually gifted. Apparently Robyn's mother was a very traditional woman, who probably believed that women's place in life was the home having and taking care of the children. If she had such mentality, it is easy to imagine that, as a way to discourage her daughter from pursuing any professional career, she may have intentionally engrained in her a complete lack of self-confidence in her intellectual abilities. I do not have any problem to believe that Robyn may not have been very good in mathematics; however, I do not see how that could say much about her lack of intelligence. In contrast, Robyn has always been very good at manipulating everybody into doing anything to please her. She has also always been considered a pretty sexy woman, so it would seem reasonable to argue that her ability to manipulate people is rather due to her sex appeal. However, I do not think it is that easy to use one's sex appeal wisely; but it takes quite some brain.

Alia told me that, when she was a teenager, some guy remarked to her, that she was not really very attractive. I can only imagine how much that must have hurt her. Alia always denied having been affected by those words, but I find it difficult to believe; I think she simply refused to acknowledge it, in the same manner that, whenever anybody found out and expressed her or his condolence for her biological father's suicide, she always rejected any such compassion and insisted not caring at all about her father's tragic end.

If there is one thing that I have always admired about Alia is her willingness to work as much as needed to accomplish whatever she wanted. Alia desired the whole world to love her; but she had accepted that she would not be able to exploit her sex appeal to be popular and have all the boys go crazy for her. Thus, she was ready to go any length of effort to win the heart of everybody around her. Admittedly, I would say that she was not always very skilled in such endeavor. For example, it seems to me that she sometimes allowed some arrogance to transpire. However, I would not blame Alia for being arrogant; but her mother. It was not Alia's fault to believe she was awesome, if her parents had always insisted to her that she was really amazing. If anything at all, Alia could only be seen as a victim of her parents unbridled and intemperate adulation, in the first place.      

        

 Alia was apparently pretty good in mathematics, and I can certainly attest for, among others, her talent for navigation. However, Robyn was definitely more gifted in the so much more important skill of getting people to fulfill her wishes. Still, at the end of the day, in my book, Alia was more "intelligent". As much as Robyn may have been brighter devising her strategies to accomplish her goals, the decisive factor that tips the scales in favor of Alia is that she always exhibited better insight and judgement selecting her goals. Indeed, Robyn, much like my father, unexplicably, constantly played a fundamental role to hurt and ultimately destroy whoever she care the most for. I can hardly think of anything more foolish. 

That does not mean, however, that I readily conclude that Robyn is plain stupid; it would be too much of a simplistic answer. Rather, I keep resorting to my brain research to observe, that Robyn's attitude is not uncommon at all; but many people follow a similar pattern of behavior, yet I certainly would not take all of them for stupid. For example, I do not think jealousy can be explained simply as stupidity. For some reason, the thought which keeps coming to my mind is that of Colonel Nicholson in "Bridge over River Kwai".

Coming out of fiction, as it does, Colonel Nicholson's anecdote cannot be taken for more than an interesting caricature; but a very interesting one indeed. Neuroscientific studies show that once we have fixed our attention on some stimulus, we become totally oblivious to everything going on outside of said focal point (Moran and Desimone 1985 is a classic, glaring example of this observation). As a matter of fact, attention is a fundamental neural mechanism, which acts at all levels in our brains: perceptual, motor, behavioral, etc. This is so much so, that we have little doubt to refer as 'Attentional Deficit Disorder' to the deficiency of our capacity to stay focused on a given objective. If it takes a lot of energy to fix our attention on something, the very same principle applies to disengaging and focusing on something else. Now, if a significant effort is always already required in order to disengage from any regular conduct, the emotional relevance of the intended aim can turn this struggle unsurmountable. It actually makes a lot of sense, since we do not want to be diverted away from those endeavors which we feel crucial. On the other hand, we then may disregard an important impending development or simply lose track of the big picture; just because we were absorbed and had got stuck with some other issue, which we chose to overvalue. I remember Robyn explaining she was a very emotional person. Given, for example, how strongly she felt about having been neglected by her mother, I do not find any reason to doubt it. In the span of a handful of years during Alia's early childhood, Robyn lost her husband and her mother. Alia was Robyn's only child and it is easy to see how she must have meant everything in the world to Robyn. It therefore should have also been equally easy for Robyn to convince herself, that keeping her child close to her was the best way for it to stay protected. It is then only natural that Robyn got stuck watching what her whole life depended upon, and remained blind, deaf and altogether aloof to everything else in the world outside; regardless of how important it may have been, any moral concerns or what consequences could follow. If only there was something in the world outside, that Robyn would love and care for more than her own life: her child's wellbeing and happiness. Robyn loved her daughter, or so we would all say and agree; however, she made her first and foremost objective in life, to oppose that of her daughter's: Alia's supreme objective in life was to succeed in her marriage, whereas Robyn's became to destroy Alia's love for me, as the means to provoke our marriage's wreck, and get that way her daughter back.

Human beings are social animals: social animals obtain an evolutionary advantage and are fitter from their tendency to come together and cooperate. Clearly, a group of individuals become stronger as a whole and are able to accomplish more if they work together. The drive to come together is the consequence of the social animal's need to be close one to another. Indeed, social animals have an emotional dependency from the other members around it. If this need is not satisfied, the resulting frustration will slowly draw the individual into depression. This punishment-reward scheme is how our instinct conditions and guides the decisions of our reason. The social animal's brain is wired so that, if the individual is not able to win the love and affection of other members around it, then it will unescapably remain unhappy. In short, in order to be happy, we need to feel loved; there is no way around it.

We all have a fair understanding of how hard it is to be lonely. Still, more and more people these days, much like my father, conclude that the company of other people is generally so annoying, that they will rather endure loneliness. However, the existence of a greater evil does never make the lesser evil less painful. In a similar fashion, just because there is food, which is poisoning or simply unhealthy; it does not change in any way the fact, that we will starve, if we resolve to refuse eating any food at all.       

Whether we like it or not, we just have to come to terms with what we are, and we simply cannot make it out alone in this life. Consequently, it only makes sense that, if our reason insists in taking us to a precipice, our instinct is going to punish it, until we accept to drop our foolish attitude. On the inverse side of the coin we then find that, In order to be happy, it becomes necessary to succeed in two main missions: First, we need to learn to appreciate the people around us and, secondly, we need to win the love of, if not everybody, at least a sufficient number of people. It may seem that success at the latter should really be all what matters. In fact, the former serves more as an auxilary to the latter. My point is that, while it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out how important it is to win the love of other people; it is certainly more reasonable to doubt the relevance of learning to appreciate the people around us. Yet, it seems to me rather implausible that you are going to make any good effort to win another person's love, if you do not feel any appreciation for human beings in the first place. These days, I find more and more people who try to buy love with money. However, it takes to love somebody to be truly loved. Whether we like it or not, we better come to terms with the reality that happiness is simply impossible without love.   

 

Robyn, much like my mother, always had a deep feeling that her mother never loved or cared for her, nearly as much as she needed. Therefore, when the time came where she became a mother herself, she knew well, that she wanted to do better: she was going to wrap her child in all the love in the world and support it in anything, no matter what. As popular as these parenting theories are today, I am not keen of them at all. I rather adhere to the principle, whereby it is preferable to teach how to fish, than to feed fish to the hungry (let alone to simply tell him that he has the right to as much fish as he needs). For example, I do not think it is a matter of finding the right balance between protection and overprotection. Rather, I believe the key is to, little by little, allow the child exposure to increasingly complex environments. Obviously, this is easier said than done. Nevertheless, I do think that it is counterproductive to overwhelm and spoil the child with far more love than what it has earned with its behavior. Mothers have immense sway over their children. It therefore only makes sense to put said sway to a good purpose. Our great grandmothers would explain that, if the child misbehaves, it is not the right time for the mother to respond with kisses. The basis of my theory is therefore that it is, not only in the child's best interest, but also crucial for its future wellbeing, to learn how to win the heart of the people around it. Yet, there is a fundamental principle in animal psychology, whereby any behavior which is rewarded gets reinforced,, while any behavior which is punished gets inhibited. Consequently, unconditional love, to the extent that it is undeserved reward, does not provide the child any cue as of what behaviors will win it the heart of other people. Soon they will tell us that we all have the right to be love, and we will all celebrate all the freedoms we have conquered; however, not even the rich will this time be able to buy to fruition the new right to be loved.   

In the years to come, it will be for me very disappointing and distressing to experience over and over again, how everybody will disagree and disapprove to the point of frustration, my insistance trying to work things out with Alia and mend our relationship. Yet, I definitely could not see it any other way. We have been compatible and liked each other for the previous six years. We were fundamentally the same people than one month, one year and six years earlier. Our relationship - albeit, reasonably enough, perhaps, not as passional as in the beginning - had nothing but grown stronger with time, to the degree that when we went to Africa we were definitely buddies. Basically, we have loved each other and been happy throughout our marriage and, despite any mistake, as big as this may have been, there was no sensible reason why it could not and should not continue like that. The right question to ask will never be why the hell she does not love me as much as I need and deserve; but what is that I could and should do in order for her to love me as much as I want.