When the Heart Has No Teeth

Throughout the first 15 years of my life, my mother’s heart had a dream for me: I would attend MIT and become a civil engineer. I have no idea why that strong wish for me lived in her. As far as I know she didn’t know any civil engineers, nor anyone who ever went to MIT. 

That’s me – 2nd from the right – in my mother’s psychotic dreams

One morning however, I woke up to discover that my mother’s dream for me had changed. “Last night Tom came and told me not to worry,” she said (Tom was her first husband who had recently died of tuberculosis). “He said that you’re going to play baseball for the New York Yankees.”

This was the form that my mother’s psychotic break from reality took that morning shortly after I turned 16. She had to be immediately committed to the state mental hospital in Middletown, Connecticut. My 14-year-old sister and I were soon placed into the care of our 23 year-old-half-sister – Tom’s daughter – developmentally still a child herself.

While somewhat of a dramatic illustration, I think it clearly points out what I’m describing. My mother dreamed of me being educated and successful. It was probably also a dream she simultaneously had for herself – she was an avid reader – but she lacked sufficient inner and outer network resources to begin putting the foundations in place which would allow such a dream to become reality. My mother’s good heart lacked teeth. Another way to think about it is: the connectivity in my mother’s neural networks was severely compromised by her own childhood traumas (Our father’s own trauma had him abandon our family when I was four and my sister was two).

Over the years I have been fortunate in my life to encounter people whose healing dreams for me not only turned out to be well-matched with my own, but whose hearts had sufficient teeth to help me bring those dreams into reality. I won’t name them all here. You know who you are.

Taking It to Level 7 on the Brain Integration Scale

Most of those toothy angels who periodically appeared in my life had progressed in their own lives through Erik Erikson’s 8 Stages of Human Psychosocial Development and made it to the generativity (rather than the stagnation) side of Stage 7. This is the stage that begins to care about and offer support to the generations following behind it.

When you look at each of Erikson’s stages, it’s not too hard to imagine there are neural network correlates associated with each of them. If you administered fMRI brain scans to people previously identified at Stages 1-8, I’m guessing you would see specific patterns of network integration that would correlate with each stage. As a general observation, I would posit that it takes more energy and information and network integration to begin thinking about people other than only about ourselves. We know, for example, that the networks are configured differently in people identified as narcissists than in people who easily express high degrees of empathy. Caring for and helping others just seems to be the general direction that healthy, integrated, aging brains want to naturally move. Our brains want to grow our hearts in ways that have teeth.

Sweethearts True

Most of the people I know whom I would describe as good-hearted are true sweethearts. I like spending time with them. I sometimes find myself in that category. Mostly though, I am aware of not having sufficient teeth to provide the help I might want to offer that others may need or could benefit from.

For example, several years ago I applied to be a volunteer member of our town’s local Ethics Board. I would be part of the team that received complaints about town police or public officials committing “actions that are not in the town’s best interests or that have the appearance of impropriety.” My application for the position was rejected and I was given reasons that I felt were specious – one of my references had unproven ethical allegations made against her (making me guilty by association); and the interviewers (all men) didn’t like research I mentioned from MIT (interestingly) citing that groups made up of all men don’t make decisions as wisely as groups with at least a few women members. Instead of taking issue with the decision, I simply meekly accepted the rejection and went on my way. I then made up all kinds of stories about why their decision was “for the best.” In my heart though, I knew I had no teeth, that I had abdicated the pursuit of something I was initially really interested in taking on.

What I know and now regularly practice as best I am able is that: “abdication is not integration.” And if my heart’s going to grow teeth, I have to practice … fighting hard for what I want. It’s even okay to recruit some allies along the way whose hearts do have plenty of teeth: Fellow sweethearts (kalyana mitra) on the journey.