filed in Happy Ever After
The Benefit of Awe
I took myself to the movies on Saturday, and saw The Third Man, a British film noir masterpiece, and it put me in the best mood. And still this morning I breezed into my car with lifted spirits. Even the jerk that cut me off from the right lane couldn’t sour me. I turned on NPR, and the host announced that in honor of Valentines Day, he’d be featuring conversations about love, EVERY day this week. Not that there’s anything wrong with love, but does it have to be for a whole week?
I began to fidget. First up, biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, who is also “Chief Scientific Advisor” to the dating site, Chemistry.com (where a friend recently met a fantastic man). Fisher has written numerous books on the nature of attraction, and started the interview talking about finding an appropriate mate as “LIFE’S GREATEST PRIZE.” Gulp. I sank down in my seat. This is exactly the kind of talk that could make me think I’m a loser. It’s a good thing I’m still basking in the glow of great art, and besides, I’ve got a bag of quotes precisely for the occasion. I reach for one from Abraham Joshua Heschel, the brilliant theologian and social activist, who said, “I did not ask for success, I asked for wonder.”
Why It’s Great to Be Single on Valentines Day, reason #5 from Matty:
You can stay clear of this: http://www.valentinesdaymovie.com/
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I find it mildly distressing that Helen Fisher considers finding a mate to be “life’s greatest prize”. Surely accomplishing something you never thought you could, be it running a marathon or unclogging the toilet, and doing that thing BY YOURSELF should trump the mate search. After all, accomplishments are prizes that can be won over and over again and the empowerment of raising the bar for yourself makes you grow in a way nothing else can.
That said, I am planning a wonderful Valentine’s Day. Extra-long workout, followed by homemade chocolate layer cake for breakfast, followed by opening the gifts I bought for myself (two books!), followed by making a pot roast just for me. I’ll probably get myself a bouquet of flowers, too–springish tulips, since roses are so tired.
I wasn’t familiar with Helen Fisher until I read your post, although I think now, I watched an interview with her once, late at night on TV in a hotel room, the point of which was to plug her new dating website.
You can’t be a scientist and have a website for profit on the topic you’re researching. I don’t care what degrees Helen Fisher has, what studies she’s completed, she has compromised her ethical integrity and none of her findings have scientific relevance. Of course this will have no effect on her public esteem, where science and authority serve mostly as sauce to further tantalize and substantiate the titillating topic of the day.
That being said, I agree with her that love in many ways resembles an addiction, but this doesn’t seem like new or particularly interesting information to me. The fact that love has evolutionary and chemical (brain based) components has long been understood. The interesting part for me is that, unlike baboons, we humans have a capacity for reason which mitigates the purity and unconsciousness of these biological and chemical drives. The more conscious we are of our thoughts and feelings and their origins, the more choices we have and the more powerful we are.
Do we feel Mother Theresa missed out on life’s greatest prize because she chose not to indulge herself in romantic love? You could argue that she sublimated her feelings (I bet she’d agree) but I doubt she felt her life was unfulfilled. Finding a love partner is a prize to be treasured, but it does not define our purpose here.
[…] to it, when romantic love is bombarding me, and I don’t mean in a good way. The other day, I got ambushed while tuning into a favorite radio show, and even the stalwart Writer’s Almanac is featuring a […]
[…] few days after posting The Benefit of Awe, I decided to get in touch with Dr. Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist and “Chief […]
As I said on another site, there is always a ready market in women (especially) who are desperate to be married. After a lifetime being told nonstop that you are nothing without a man, that you must have marriage and babies to be fulfilled (biologically, financially, emotionally, spiritually), why would anyone think otherwise?
I love Jen’s words here: “science and authority serve mostly as sauce to further tantalize and substantiate the titillating topic of the day…” I would add that this “sauce” also opens the wallets. (I’m not cynical about free markets and capitalism, but I do know marketing when I see it.) All this dating and mating “information” should come with a disclaimer: Let the buyer beware.