Opinion/Editorial
AFFINITY TWINS
What lies deep inside our social construct of consciousness that remains so brutally and constantly felt but so nearly impossible to describe or explain? What is this animal condition called loyalty that we humans must have and demonstrate to survive? This condition extends right into the divergent animal species surrounding our species. Dogs, cats, and other pets exhibit this trait toward humans, as do animals of almost all other species depending upon circumstance, conditions, and geography. They also exhibit this trait toward animals of their own kind. Reproductive needs can explain why human males and females ‘fall in love’ and also why some species pair bond for life, but it can’t explain why loyalty lays at the genetic foundation of almost all social requirements for survival on this planet. Having loyalty is having a heart. Having a heart is having bliss. Or is it?
What did the Tin Man in the movie Wizard of Oz want? He was rusted to a standstill when Dorothy came upon him in the woods. She used an oil can to get him moving and eventually, he got what he wanted so badly, a heart. Of course, in real life, that anyone would feel so deeply that having a ‘heart’ was so vitally important would already have exhibited the characteristics of having one. In real life some have hearts and those who live to take advantage of those who have hearts…setting their own need for the same quality aside by using survival (usually financial) as the excuse for heartless behavior.
Many people in leadership positions view their ability to affect those around them (ergo; lead) as being bifurcated into two separate but ill-joined forces. They must illustrate to the world that they have a heart while acting as heartless as can be so their own, and their represented charges, can be in a position to have any heart at all. Harry Truman probably truly thought he was showing heart when he ordered atomic bombs to be dropped on Japan (saving so many Allied lives in ending the war) while at the same time, he could not have acted more heartlessly for hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians, men, women and children.
Is having a heart and demonstrating complete loyalty more of a balancing act than a strict descriptor of being and action? Is everything in the universe relative, including all emotional foundations? Is everything a tradeoff because life on planet Earth is so astoundingly complex and unpredictable?
I was once in a twenty-foot Zodiac out on the Bering Sea near the Pribalof Island Chain on my way to pick up a small group of biological scientists. I slowed the rubber boat as I approached the shore. A three-hundred-pound seal came out of nowhere and slid right into the boat until his head was level with my own a foot or two away. I realized that the seal could horribly injure or kill me in seconds. I stood with the big outboard idling, frozen in place. The seal managed to maneuver around and turn to face forward in the boat. The seal then looked back over his shoulder. I got it. I drove the seal slowly around the island while it took in everything, occasionally making a barking sound. When I got back to where we started, he slid out of the boat and was seen no more. Did the seal have a heart or simply want a ride? I felt at the time that the seal had not thought of harming me in its heart. Was I wrong? Is having a heart merely not doing wrong or is it something deeper, more intrinsic, written into the body of language of the soul?
The word ‘friend’ might be used to describe a person or entity we demonstrate heart toward and expect in return. The word friend has been so diluted though that it barely has any depth of emotional meaning anymore. We have ‘friends’ on Facebook and Google Plus we’ve never met and never will meet, but there they are using up that word. A unique phrase might better describe a person or thing demonstrating heart. Affinity twin. The phrase was coined by an author named E.C. Tubb many years ago when he wrote an almost unknown science fiction series of novels (the Dumarest novels). Tubb got it. His definition of having a real heart was intensely deep, intrinsically based, and held together with mental ‘titanium’ struts.
An affinity twin is another entity joined by intertwined coils of unbreakable emotional strength. The coils only splice together when the entities are in exactly the right space and attuned to the same frequency. Once linked the coils cannot be taken apart, they can only be diminished in intensity over time unless renewed. Was Tubb, in his fictional portrayal, merely beseeching the universe to hold such to be real and true or was he actually describing something he found to be a foundational truth embedded silently and with most having any knowledge into the fiber of mankind? Go through your own hypothetical list of friends and see if anything rings a bell or fits.
