It’s easy to think that our most basic instinct is to survive.
After all, we live in an individualistic society that teaches us that we’re all islands, entities able to live independent lives.
But what if that’s wrong?
Countless stories can be told where mothers or fathers put their children’s lives before their own. Stories of people voluntarily running into burning buildings to save strangers who were stuck inside.
If self-preservation of the individual was our driving force, those stories would make no sense.
What if, instead, we look beyond our belief that our survival is our most important drive?
Togetherness > survival
It’s too easy to forget that we are social beings, evolved over thousands of years to live within close-knit groups.
It’s in the safety of those groups that we survived against the perils of hunger and of nature. Without the group, we were nothing.
It’s only since the advent of industrial agriculture and consumerism in the 1950s that we’re even in a position to physically survive without the need to grow our own food, build our own shelters or collect our own firewood—all things which take a group effort.
Even if it feels normal to us now to go and buy whatever food we want whenever we want, or to turn on the heating from the flip of a switch, living how we do today is the historical abnormality.
Layered deep within us, we have a stronger, albeit muffled, instinct — to be together.
To look out for one another.
To feel connected to one another.
In developmental psychology, this connection is called attachment.
Attachment is connection
To be attached to another human is like having a phone line set up between you.
When well maintained, messages can travel along it. Messages of guidance, of support and love.
However, without it, without attachment, it's impossible for any message to be heard.
The line falls silent.
Yet the yearning for connection will still be there.
Unfortunately, improper attachment leads to unhealthy ways of filling the void.
We seek external validation, we seek the adulation of fame. We seek attachment in toxic relationships. We compromise our personal boundaries or sacrifice our personal values.
Whatever the case, these behaviours do not actually fulfil our need for attachment and, instead, we’re left searching, alone.
Attachment is sacred
So what can we do?
We can nurture our attachments to the people who matter to us most, particularly our children.
We can build up that phone line through daily acts of connection.
By making eye-contact, which makes them feel seen.
By smiling at them, which makes them feel wanted.
By hugging them, which makes them feel loved.
Secure attachment allows our children to explore the world around them on their own terms.
They can play and learn to feel their emotions in a safe space.
And they can rest in the knowledge that they are safe, in spite of the scariness of the world.
This post was inspired by a talk I recently saw by Dr. Gordon Neufeld, a developmental psychologist who co-authored a book with Gabor Maté called Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers (note: affiliate links).
Watch Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s TED Talk here.