I'm An Out-of-Control Love Junky

Why I Write, Part Next

A lot of things have to be taken care of for a person to think about love. Our concerns our air, water, food, shelter, our sleep, and clothing. Maslow, from whose hierarchy I’m borrowing, includes reproduction in his list, but he’s wrong to do so.

Reproduction belongs two rungs up the ladder from where it is classically placed because in reproduction we are affirming that what we have is worth continuing to have—in other words, to reproduce is to affirm that we belong and should continue to exist.

Maslow Was an Out-of-Control Love Junky Too

It’s easy to picture Abraham Maslow as a gruff, outdoorsy sort of man who sustained on wild berries and snared rabbits. At least that’s how I imagine Mr. Maslow.

And I think Abe was probably the kind of guy who, when he fell for a lady, he fell hard!

Abe probably scared love interests away with his out-of-control emotions. He met a woman on a nature walk, fell hard, and proposed eternal union, but what felt like ages of pining for her to him, felt to her like literal seconds on the hand of a clock—because it was—and she ran terrified.

Because Abe couldn’t stand even one more rejection, he hatched a hierarchy to help him get outside himself.

It took practice but eventually he turned a corner, the big one.

If he was going to get him a big helping of love, the woman of his dreams had to see that he was an expert provider—being near him would guarantee a woman the cleanest air, the freshest water, the tastiest food, and the warmest shelter.

So Abe built a log cabin, and he built a pen for chickens, and he cultivated a garden.

Still, women on nature walks didn’t stop to visit. Abe contemplated why. In his contemplative posture, he noticed his rail thin arms and counted the ribs beneath his chest. He looked to himself, sickly.

So Abe lifted rocks and ran by the stream. After months of this, the woman he’d admired stopped to say hello.

Soon they were married and had children. Abe expected to be happy with his love junky meter full, but the love leaked out and he sometimes felt lonely.

One night he looked at his three-tiered hierarchy and recognized a missing rung.

All that he’d done was merely the beginning because he couldn’t settle for just one love, but he was wise enough to know that one lover was enough of that special kind of loving.

Instead he pursued the love of others by teaching men cabin-building and garden-cultivating, and pushups.

With a growing sphere of men who held him in high esteem, Abe thought surely his love bucket would runneth over, but it continued to empty faster than he could fill it.

At last, he recognized that his love bucket would always run dry unless he continued to expand. To be the best he could be, he needed to be a great husband, father, cabin-building teacher and friend.

He was a lifetime love junky like you and me. The more deeply he loved, the more deeply he could love. And so the story went.

I Write Because I Search & Because I’ve Found

Find your own damn reasons. This one’s mine. (I’m partly kidding, but also, chances are you have another spin on this at least.)

Every article, essay, story, poem, list, note, or journal is on exploration of becoming. I’m obsessed with what I can become. My friend A. and I used to discuss this: His favorite movie was Cast Away because he loved the journey of Tom Hanks to arrive at a choice where I favored American History X because I loved the journey of Ed Norton to become.

If you are in A.’s camp, you identify with the journey to more fully be yourself. If you are in my camp, you identify with the caterpillar as it transforms into a butterfly.

There are other stories. These are two.

On this messy journey toward why we continue to find less-than-satisfying conclusions to big questions. I’m leaving off here, but I hope, if you’re finding value in the hunt, you bear with half-baked reflections, and I hope you’re better off after reading this.

Tomorrow, I shall likely try to sell you something.