Mother Nature

“The depths of the female heart have yet to be explored to this day” Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I don’t know exactly what he meant by that. It is a quote I can remember word for word. If we know anything about memory and especially with words, is the amount of attention that must be paid to remember something WORD for WORD. I guess that should serve as a reason for how important this quote is. Would it not make sense that a factor in the judgment of competence about a topic, should be how much a person values what they’re preaching their competence of? If that makes sense then I will explore Dostoyevsky’s quote and why he wrote it. In the end, I will explore such depths further than anyone has, at least further than the day this quote was written.

First, we have all agreed on the term ‘Mother Nature’ and I’ve yet to come across someone that objects. We do not take care of ‘Mother Nature’ the best way we could. This is the absolute truth, and no one denies that. If it was not the truth, then why put effort into the sciences to find better ways than we have now? Someone is always saying we should take better care of ‘Mother Nature’. I know someone, I bet you probably know someone like that too and so if it’s not just me then I am not delusional. Being delusional which would in turn make me too stupid to see the actual truth. Otherwise, both the person who wrote this and the one reading it is stupid. So, let’s agree it’s the truth. In addition, the only people we call ‘mother’ are women, and if we aren’t treating mother nature the best way we could, is it possible that we also aren’t treating women the.…? Can you see where I am going? The definition of “Mother Nature” is “nature personified as a creative and controlling force” If we are going to personify nature and assign that term to one being, a being whom we can clearly tell is flawed. If we are going to do that, then we had some damn good reasons for doing so. Maybe we have even better ones for continuing to do so! This was better said by Jordan Peterson, “a culture that doesn’t hold the mother and child as sacred dies…it has to be held as something you revere…”

What prompts a 24-year-old man who knows the bare minimum about how the world works and knows just enough to survive think of remembering a quote, trying to really understand it, and then writing about it as if he had any place to do any of those? I tried to understand Friedrich Nietzsche where he says in his book Beyond Good and Evil, “supposing that truth is a woman—what then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women…” In short, I need evidence and/or experience. By doing it this way I can also be exploring these depths Fyodor mentioned. Ha Ha! is that a lot? The decision to write about this was and always will be ultimately mine. On the contrary, I had no choice but to think of that which is beneficial to Mother Nature. Since I like to think of ways of doing things that would benefit me, then the previous isn’t farfetched. Moreover, I will do my best to illustrate the specific situations that founded my questioning and stance on this topic.

Certain men will never understand the life a woman has to live until he witnesses the day to day life of his sister, mother, or daughter. He could not possibly begin to comprehend why this topic of conversation will not cease. This is where the evidence and experience are going to help. During the early years of my childhood, I was in the care of three very powerful women. They were all businesswomen and very successful may I say. Who were these women? My great-grandmother and her two daughters. In my teens, I moved to the U.S and was reunited with my mother, stepfather, and half-sister. During the years after the migration and to the present day, I have interacted and talked to at the very least 100 women. In other words, your honor, I got some shit to say! Back to the depths Dostoyevsky mentioned. Picture me getting off work after what seems just another day of the “grind” and making my way back home. I finally get my keys into the door and by the way who knew keys could be so annoying. The whole concept of having to use this thing in order to live safely blows my mind. What if I am in a rush to use the bathroom? Like number 2! Worst case what if I am in immediate danger and need to get inside very quickly? Then I have to basically figure out a legit puzzle. I’ve never made a lock or a key, so I’ll stop my criticism of it. Otherwise, I’m just complaining at that point.

Moving on, I walk inside, and I hear someone call my name and it’s my little sister. She does this to reassure herself that it is in fact I that came home, and I don’t know why she would ever have to do that. I mean everyone in the house knows the family schedule so why does she need to check? Anyway, she immediately stops whatever she was doing and meets me at the door before I even take my next step. She reaches her arms out for a hug and we share cheek kisses. One kiss on the left and then the right. Something that I learned from my grandmother and never questioned but felt the most mannered thing to do. This is also from a woman if you haven’t noticed the theme yet. My sister doing this has been the case for as long as I can remember. No one told her to do this and I just remember saying to myself on a certain occasion, “Uhm she has done this every day this week…and the whole of last week.” What followed was my natural questioning of it because, well, the depths.

The next few weeks after my realization and in some sense until today, I explored why this interaction took place and its possible correlation to the depths. Now I understood Friedrich Nietzsche when he said, “he who has a why to live can bear almost any how”. I get that and would it not be justified to know why my sister was this way? Maybe if I understood the why and subsequently now had a why then the how of I am able to interact with women in my life would hopefully be more than just bearable. I feel to understand why I need know something, is as important as what is to be known. I’ll go further to say maybe that’s more important. I struggled to find a root that I could point to as a reason for my sister’s behavior. I went through several scenarios. Maybe she learned it from my mom, dad, brother, our neighbor, her best friend, and so on and so forth. One reason could be the day I found her practicing her violin and decided to sit and listen. Now she had just started and was not very good. However, I could see her figuring this thing out as I just sat there. She finally put what was at first to my ears chaotic sounds, into an order that created music. I guess my ears being saved from suffering and as a result reacting in a way that resembled happiness made her happier. She was already happy to begin with. She accomplished what she wanted and seeing someone else being happy about the same thing made it sweeter.

That may be why she is so loving and caring, maybe me sitting down one day and listening out of curiosity resulted in me receiving such compassion. That seems so small and simple. It could not be possible that doing something so small would have such a huge reward. Could it? Honestly. If it isn’t, then it has to be the repetition of days that I did that small thing and thought nothing of it. To the extent that it wasn’t until I finally became aware that I have someone who cares enough to express with me that my merely being here is something they cherish.

Is this a case of a standard set very low? Let us explore it. Supposing that was the bare minimum to receiving that which I am most certainly grateful for. The least I could do is reciprocate or pay it forward. Even if I didn’t reciprocate it, would it not be in my best interest selfishly speaking, to go a standard higher or above and beyond the bare minimum to bring more of what I am grateful for? See even with the bar set low it would take a madman, a weak man, and a man that is suffering from his weakness. It would also take a madwoman, a weak woman, and a woman that is suffering from her weakness. “…and is it not true that on the whole, woman has hitherto been most despised by woman herself and not at all by us…”-Nietzsche.

Even after receiving such love and doing the bare minimum required, it would take a man and a woman like that to wish or worse intentionally seek to bring harm to ultimately Mother Nature.

Another example is my mother. She might be a better factor when drawing comparisons. I confessed to her about pain in my shoulder that kept nagging me and had been for two days. She gave me a general sense of what to do and we both went on with our day. I wake up on a Sunday morning and moments upon greeting my stepfather, the news of my mother being in the emergency room for hours the night before reached me. I asked if she was awake and made my way to her bedroom. One, when I was hurt, she knew about it. Two, she was hurt to the point that she had to seek professional medical attention and I didn’t know. You might object and say, “you should’ve tried to help yourself before asking your mother”. I did, two days in a row, and asking her wasn’t a bad idea. She has worked at hospitals, so I assumed she knew something I didn’t. Nonetheless, I am simply speaking from a position of notifying each other. I finally had the chance to check up on her and she assured me she was doing well. That she was also given various medications to help ease the pain. We talked for a little and as I was about to exit, she exclaims while rustling through the pharmacy bag, “oh! I was given this patch to place directly on the surface area of where I felt the pain, you can use it for your shoulder”. I just stood there not only in confusion but utter shock or better yet disbelief. How selfless is she? The capacity at which she can be selfless never stops to amaze me. That might be a perfect explanation of why my stepfather designated his Sunday mornings to be her room service. Again, this is him doing this one thing over and over and when we stretch that over a long period, a prime example of the snowball effect is represented.

Judging from these two examples, examples that may be the bare minimum, how could we have not explored the depths. If someone claims the opposite and we choose each day to ignore what we learned from our exploration, then we are ungrateful. Why do I think that? Tupac Shakur said it best, “And if we don’t, we’ll have a race of babies that will hate the ladies that make the babies”. If that is something we want, then keep going ladies and gentlemen. We will get there soon enough.