Living on Instinct: Just Born This Way

In my Literature class this week we were assigned, “We So Seldom Look on Love”, by Barbara Gowdy. One of the greatest stories I have ever read.

A quick glance at the title offers you a vivid, cliched scenario between two middle-aged love-lorn loons: a conspiracy theorist obsessed with his wife’s elusive manner and an artist suspecting her husband’s faith to their marriage. In other words, I judged this book by its cover, and before reading it already became a turn-off. A grave mistake indeed on my part.

We So Seldom Look on Love is a short story about a necrophiliac. Bonus: it’s a young woman. Right? I didn’t expect that either.

I should make it clear right now that this is not a book review and I don’t intend to reveal any plot points or spoilers, so for all you book fanatics, you may relax.

So why did I bring it up? Well… like Sky Burial, I have savored a very special line:

“But something drove me to go through with these compunctions. It was as if I were acting solely on instinct and curiosity, and anything I did was all right, provided it didn’t kill me.”

And how strange it was to let those few words seep into the deepest depths of my mind. They’ve stayed with me every day since they found me. What they said to me was, you were just born this way.

I liked that. Loved it, in fact; the idea of living by instinct. That provoked for me a series of thoughts, analysis and a continuing process of studying human conditioning vs inheritance.

There are things we are taught, lessons we learn and by-laws we hear and speak. We ingest these sets of given beliefs day by day and we can all attest to the notion that we operate on rules which further establish our values. But while most people live among given guidelines from society, there are many others who work against them. The alarming difference: they don’t believe they are doing anything wrong; a feeling the narrator of the story fearlessly demonstrates through her rituals and love-making with male bodies.

The passage itself infers a sense of natural impulse. It is completely natural for them to feel so compelled by their passion to commit what we have deemed as “immoral”, just as it is natural for you to breathe – what your enemies may condemn as a sin. Just as it feels natural for those who are homosexual, straight, or insane.

I don’t like the idea of genetics playing the main role in our behaviour or personality – although science is tough to argue. Here’s my opinion: when it is mentioned that genes or blood-cells are the reciprocal of brain development, it almost purposely excludes certain individuals and forces them to bear names or labels. Hence the common teen-hate of ‘categories’. However, I suppose if this weren’t so, I would not be writing about it now.

I like to feel that I live not because I was told how to, but because I already know how. For me.

Flip, flip, flip, thunk.
Flip, flip, flip.

That’s how fast I have ripped through this story. I’ve read it six times already. A definite recommendation for anyone who appreciates the odd, unorthodox and the new!

- J.