Connectedness

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This week Jane and I were away for a few days. On our return, the pugs greeted us as though we had been gone forever. It might be that they had given up hope that we would ever return, and then, quite unexpectedly, there we were. Chaos ensued! There was running around, and snorting, and jumping, and the perpetual motion of tails wagging, and bodies pressing against legs. They wanted to be picked up, stroked, and talked to. Mostly, they wanted to be close. Pugs are sometimes called “Velcro dogs,” and ours certainly qualify. Sit down at any time of the day and, within a few moments, a pug will be beside you, preferably touching you. You find yourself involuntarily petting them. Stop stroking and a small paw may reach out and gently remind you that you have apparently forgotten what your hand is for. They also watch us constantly. Sometimes I become aware of a pug simply staring at me. I look back. I see you seeing me. For a moment there is a rather wonderful connectedness.

I have become increasingly interested in the expression “human being.” I first became aware of this way of speaking through the philosopher John Ryder, although it also has obvious resonances with Heidegger and Tillich. I find myself using the singular more and more. The emphasis, for me, is on “being”; a particular kind of being, “human being.” Human becomes the modifier. It describes a particular kind of being rather than establishing a privileged category called “human beings.”

Sitting beside me on the sofa, as I write, is canine being. Human being and canine being are different, certainly. Yet both are animal being. More particularly, both are mammalian being. We are both warm-blooded creatures. We seek warmth, we form attachments, we experience separation (and anxiety with it), we recognize others, we want proximity, we touch, and we are touched.

The philosopher Mary Midgley spent much of her career reminding us that humanity is not somehow separate from the rest of animal life. Reason does not lift us out of nature. Whatever else human being may be, human being is animal being. The psychologist John Bowlby approached some of this from another direction. His attachment theory grew from his work on the bonds between children and their caregivers. A child develops attachments to those who provide care and security. The caregiver becomes what Bowlby called a “secure base,” somewhere from which the child can venture into the world and somewhere to which the child can return. As attachment theory developed it became much more complicated than that brief description suggests. Yet its central insight is striking. Human being does not begin as an autonomous individual who later decides to form relationships. We begin life attached and dependent. Human being needs others to survive. We are touched from the moment of birth. We hold babies tenderly and carefully. We reach for a frightened child’s hand. Friends embrace each other. A lover touches the other. I place my hand on the shoulder of a grieving friend when words seem inadequate. For warm-blooded mammals, warmth itself communicates something.

Even so, touch is not uncomplicated. Jane and I cared for many children during our years as foster parents. Some had experienced touch that was inappropriate, violent, or abusive. Something that should have communicated affection and safety had instead communicated danger. In our culture, we have rightly become much more aware of this. We understand consent and bodily boundaries better than we once did. Forms of touching that previous generations tolerated, ignored, or concealed should never have been tolerated. It has become clear that care requires boundaries. During the pandemic, and almost overnight, touch itself became dangerous. We stopped shaking hands and hugging friends. We kept our distance from strangers and learned to stand six feet apart. For a while, one of the ways we expressed care for other people was by not getting close to them. In a strange way, distance became an expression of connection.

Some of those habits have remained. I realize that I can go for weeks at the university without touching another person. I do not mean intimate touch. I mean a handshake, or a hand on an arm, a small moment of physical contact that once seemed unremarkable. Perhaps greater caution around touch is a good thing. Even so, I wonder whether something has been lost. Yet, connection does not require touch. We have eyes. I see you seeing me. There is something comforting about being seen. There can also be something disturbing about it. A gaze can welcome, recognize, question, or threaten. We know the difference, even when it is difficult to put into words. Other ways of connecting include speaking, listening, and simply being present. Connectedness is found in warmth, because we are embodied creatures; in care, because another being has found our attention; in joy, because the simple presence of another often brings delight; and in responsibility, because connection makes claims upon us. To connect is to accept that the well-being of the Other is no longer entirely separate from our own.

The pugs seem to understand at least some of this without needing the philosophy. They know absence and presence. They know warmth and touch. They certainly know joy. After we had been home for a while, the excitement subsided and everything returned to normal, with a pug nestled beside me; warm body against warm body; canine being beside human being. We are two forms of mammalian being that, through a strange mixture of evolution, domestication, history, and chance, have found themselves sharing a life.

Connection is not a possession. It is something that happens between us, and we and the pugs are glad we came back.

+Ab. Andy