Mother's Love

This video of the cat hugging her kitten has gone viral to an extent rarely seen.  The comments are in every language.  I've watched it several times myself and each time I feel warmth radiate from my center accompanied by a sensation of belonging and love.  Every human on this planet shares the desire for mother's love.  I hope most have experienced this as infants, but the reality is that still so many do not.  It wasn't even until the 1950's that we began to understand just how important this affection between a primary caregiver (doesn't have to be biological mom) and an infant really is.  So much of our future happiness, our intelligence and our ability to engage in the world hinges on those first few months and years.  It's so interesting to me that our species has roamed the planet in our current form for ~300k years, and yet only in the last 50 years have we begun to really understand who and what we are in a scientific way.  Yet as we watch this video we can't help but feel the stirrings of our true self as a dependent, social animal that thrives by love.  Maybe if we could stop torturing our primate cousins for the answers, and begin listening to our own intuitive knowledge we would find these answers much more readily.  We are all needy.  We are not islands. 

Extending this to our political world it becomes clear why the American experiment is failing.  Americans have come to value independence so greatly that we continue force our young towards that goal from the beginning, often isolating them in a crib apart from the warmth and heartbeat of a loving adult from the moment of birth.  The message of "dog eat dog" capitalism pounds viciously against our need for cooperation.  This is the natural outcome of a population of adults who as infants were left to cry themselves to sleep in a dark room night after night, eventually realizing that there is no one, not even their mother, who will come to their rescue or assuage their fears.  Our brains wire to this reality creating a person that will be more aggressive, less compassionate, and less happy.  When primates are isolated the desperation and later, depression, become so intense they begin to chew their legs as if attempting to end their time in this existence, and many just die.  I think America is suffering from too much independence and now seems to be gnawing at itself in a national suicide attempt.  But maybe this little kitten is our suicide hotline.  Let yourself open to that sweet message and hug your children often.