Thursday 30 January 2003

Pic of the day: First love? Screenshot from The Sims. (Don't try this at home, kids.)

Youth and romance

Why is romance for the young soul and not the old? We can give different answers to this. Notice also that some older people have young souls, stuck in the pattern of a much younger person. So it is not simply a question of the wrinkles in your skin. But let us look at two perspectives on youth and romance. One of them is from sociobiology, one from Jungian psychology. You know that I am likely to think of things like these, right?

In the cold harsh light of sociobiology, romance is simply a mechanism to create and strengthen pair bonding. In order to have children, and create an environment that is safe and healthy for children, it is useful that young people seek out a partner of the opposite sex. This requires time and energy, perhaps even risks. So it is natural that we should have an instinct that drives us to do this and rewards us when we follow it through. Romance is simply the form this instinct takes in our culture. It is not very different from some birds where the male builds a big nest in order to secure the affection of a female, so they can both raise their chickens in safety. Convergent evolution.

***

In Jungian psychology, the archetype of Anima (or Animus for the female) is the gatekeeper to the collective subconscious. This makes sense: When we are children, we are driven by the need to get and to take. We are parasites, to some degree. So we relate to the parents, who are providers. (Admittedly not all parents live up to the hype, but the fact remains that the vast majority of us are raised by at least one parent, more often than not two, who provide food and clothes and a place to live and lots of useful information during our early years.)

Once we approach adult life, we will have to break the mould and start in a new direction. We have to reach out to others, in a new form of exchange that is balanced: Mutual needs rather than one person's needs. (Not all people ever get that far. Especially not males.) Later the process will progress even further, so we give more than we get. But first there is the experience of meeting that special someone, and the breaking down of the walls of the soul so another can come into our heart. This is the domain of Anima, a very powerful archetype. She is both irresistibly attractive and overwhelming, even scary, and emotions run like giant sea waves in many young people's lives.

This experience, of the breaking down of the soul's walls, is inherently religion-like. In some ways it is the essence of religious experience. It is not truly the other person who invades our heart; the other person actually just tags along. It is the archetype, the dream princess, who does these marvelous things.

Suddenly love
comes in and finds me on open ground;
nowhere to hide, nowhere to run!
There's not turning back,
and a journey has just begun.

Suddenly love
breaks down the doors, there is singing inside;
and all of the light that's in your eyes
shining here tonight
has woken the man in me
and the woman in you.

Chris de Burgh, Suddenly Love.

Doesn't that just sum up the scary attraction of it all? "Breaks down the doors, there is singing inside." Well put. There's some breaking down that must be done, and you cannot just do this over and over and over and over again. It is for a reason that the expression "first love" has an actual religious connotation. Even with a better person, it cannot be the same the twentieth time over. Because the actual person is not the only, perhaps not even the main actor.

Don't get me wrong: In the long run, the person matters greatly, and a later relationship can far surpass an earlier. Yet there are some things that can never quite be the same as when the world was new.

Anima is the doorkeeper to the collective subconscious. Once you have passed through the door, the doorkeeper no longer has the same power. Therefore, a much older soul will experience all these things differently.

Hmm ... If any of this makes sense, you probably knew it already. (*Shrugs*) Life wisdom is what you get when you've made all the mistakes it should have warned you of, right?