Our Need for Connection
Sometimes we extend ourselves, for others, beyond all that is rational. We enact decisions that are simply not good for us, and even as we throw our own selves ‘under the bus,’ we scold ourselves for our own actions while still in motion – and yet we do not stop. We stay in bad relationships or bad marriages. We throw good money after bad trying to save someone who can’t – or won’t – be saved. We take abuse (no matter our gender), and then, we take abuse some more.
And the root is not always our own lack of self-esteem. We may, or may not, like ourselves, but how we feel about ourselves is not sufficient to explain why – against all ‘rational choice’ – we, sometimes, allow ourselves to be so discomfited.
The taproot is our very human, species-wide, need for connection. And that species-wide need for connection may even lead us to do what is not “good” for ourselves for a sentient being of another species. We may expend our meager savings – or put ourselves into debt – for the medical needs of an aging or injured four-legged friend – and we may do so emotionally, well beyond any serious hope of having our animal-friend with us very much longer.
Last week I watched something that helped me put this irrational behavior of our purportedly rational species into a new perspective.
One of my grandsons, age 8 ¾ths(for whom I myself have made less than rational choices across most of the past decade, dedicating more hours to his childcare than was rational for my own educational or career goals), was looking at a small potted tree in his mother’s apartment when he blurted out, “DeDe, do plants see? Do they hear? Do they think?”
We talked for a few moments about their lack of the organs we might consider necessary to seeing, hearing, thinking (eyes, ears, a brain). Then I juxtaposed what I thought was the modern Western scientific paradigm with the fact that indigenous paradigms consider all of nature to be ensouled – and therefore, conscious and capable of knowing, feeling, perceiving. We talked about people who talk to, or sing to, their plants, and the possibility that plants might feel pain when cut or harvested.
Being something of a documentary geek, in my quest to encourage his bent toward science, I sought some visual that might present what we know, at present, about the possibility of sentience in plants and trees. I came across the film, “Intelligent Trees” (Dordel & Tölke, 2016),and it added a whole new layer to my perception of the world.
It turns out, not only has science demonstrated that plants respond to sound (chemically react to scientists playing audio of caterpillars munching), but through their root systems they chemically warn their neighbors (and may even communicate ultrasonically).
And “mother” trees – from whose seeds saplings have sprung – feed their young through interlocking root systems until they grow tall enough to reach the sunlight and photosynthesize for themselves.
In fact, forests are extended communities of trees in various relationships – all connected and sharing and communicating – through an underground network of roots. The “mother” trees feed their babies (and while they feed their babies more), they also share nutrients out beyond their own offspring, into the larger community.
There are “friend” trees, who grow up side-by-side, and rather than compete for sunlight, form a shared crown of branches where each tree forms a full crown ¾thsof the way around, but on their shared side, they restrict their crown growth, so that the top of the two trees look like only one – sharing the light and air and space.
Turns out, trees that are not connected into such networks – say, solitary trees we plant to decorate our lawns, or trees whose networks have been killed off (“cleared”) – live far less long and are much more likely to topple in a storm.
Some of this helped explain my lack of success with houseplants. (I’ve been known to separate plants growing together, cut through their root networks, and repot them – only to have them struggle and die).
But more, it helped explain why I, and you, have each had times when we have done what was “wrong” for ourselves – emotionally and financially (in this capitalist monetary system) – to “help” – or simply to keep connection with a person (or a pet) we didn’t want to lose.
It may not have been your “lack of self-esteem.” There is NOTHING WRONG WITH your human desire for connection.
If trees can have – need– networks of interlocking connection, how could we ourselves – sentient beings that we are– exist uprooted and transplanted and potted off from the rest of our (human)kind.
As I said in my last blog, “Our Aching Tribal Roots,” we have a very real, very visceral, very human, species-wide, need for connection.
Four-legged beings can help fill that gap. Time spent out in the forest, with the Tree People, can help feed our souls. We can connect with plants, and other animals, and all of Nature around us.
But we also have a need for human connection as real as our need for food, and water, and air.
Human connection is, for humans, a form of sustenance, even as having a community connected at the root is a source of sustenance for forests.
There is nothing wrong with your need, but you may be seeking nutrients from a damaged source.
If the sources from which you seek your sustenance are not themselves healthy, your aching need for connection can still be fed.
Unlike a tree, it is possible for you to move around, to make forays into new communities, to make new connections. Trees can neither run from harm nor hook into new communities – but you can.
Let’s talk about it.
Counseling is one way to make a new connection àthat can help you free yourself of damaged (and damaging) connections that are not (cannot) give you connection-sustenance àand to obtain coaching to make new outreach whereby you can connect your taproot to networks that can and will feed you.
Call or text Rev. Dr. Nadine Rosechild Sullivan at 215-704-4264 or write at Rosechild@ChestnutHillSpiritualCounseling.com.
© 2017 Nadine Rosechild Sullivan, Ph.D.