Perfection

by Julie Metz

  The food analogy was easy to follow. Any trip to a neighborhood grocery store or a fast-food restaurant at the nearby mall would confirm what I already knew—left to our own devices, most of us head straight for the snacks. Only self-restraint, strong cultural habits, and knowledge of nutrition help us refrain from living on French fries, burgers, and Häagen-Dazs. The problem of modern life is that we now have easier access to many things—fatty, sugary foods, fast cars, and willing sex partners—than we ever would have had as members of hunter-gatherer bands on the prehistoric plains.

  At Don’s recommendation, I bought The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, the eminent Darwinian scientist. I read—and, because of those abovementioned lapses in science education—misread texts. Don kindly redirected me. I tackled the texts again. Our dialogue continued as Don gave me a crash course in evolutionary science.

  Charles Darwin didn’t discover evolution. Many scientists had been exploring this idea before Darwin published On the Origin of Species, in 1859. Darwin’s revolutionary contribution was an explanation of the process that drives evolution and produces adaptations. Unlike the vague and sometimes mystical explanations during his own time, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was based on his observations in nature. His theory depends upon the existence of inherited variation within populations. He saw that the variations exist and that, as generations go by, these variations continue to exist. He couldn’t fully explain how this happens, and it wasn’t really explained until well into the twentieth century, with the new field of genetics.

  Even a small child can observe how the different parts of living creatures indicate functions. Wings promote flight, eyes promote sight, and hearts promote the circulation of blood. In organisms, these components with particular functions are called adaptations.

  The goal of evolutionary psychology is to study brain adaptations. As Don explained, the human brain, like the rest of the body, is a collection of adaptations, evolved over immense periods of time to solve the particular adaptive problems encountered by our ancestors. Our brain mechanisms and our behavior are, like our ability to see, hear, and breathe, the products of evolution by natural selection.

  Human culture has changed dramatically since the dawn of what we call civilized society, moving from Pleistocene nomadic hunter-gatherers (1.8 million to 11,000 years ago) to early settlements, from the great cultures of the Mayans and the Egyptians to our own modern, high-tech society. But this massive leap has happened in a mere blip of evolutionary time. Our biological makeup has not changed. As Don succinctly put it, “In short, it’s a mistake to think of ourselves as somehow containing remnants of our primitive ancestors; in every basic adaptation, we ARE our primitive ancestors.”

  Don further clarified the concepts of mutations and natural selection: from the many random mutations that occur in nature, the individuals of any species who survive well enough to reproduce in a given environment are able to pass their traits, desirable or undesirable, to the next generation. Thus, natural selection is nonrandom, but it is not some long-term “improvement” plan. We only have to look around us and at ourselves to see that survival and reproduction do not require perfection.

  Don described the world of early man, our ancestors, whom we resemble more than we might like to admit. In that time, people lived in hunter-gatherer groups, which varied in size according to the availability of resources. Support by the group was essential to survival—and being expelled from the group might be fatal. Within the group, almost all fertile women were married, and access to multiple partners was limited and full of risks.

  By contrast, present-day nuclear families live in larger, less structured communities. Individuals can meet many people in all sorts of contexts. We can travel in our cars, and most recently, we can hide behind the anonymity of the Internet. Sexual mores have changed dramatically in a very short time. So, it’s a bit like Mc-Donald’s—lots of easy access to food and behavior that can get us into trouble.

  Don put it this way: “The glacial slowness of natural selection compared with the rapidity of environmental change humans can manufacture pretty much guarantees that we don’t have any complex adaptations to recent environmental novelties.”

  Don and I continued our e-mail discussion:

  ME

  So, men and women, evolutionarily speaking, are really operating at cross-purposes in mate seeking. Women are “wired” to seek a reliable partner with healthy genes, and men are “wired” to seek as many partners as they can attract, at the least cost.

  So to what degree can we make choices and think of ourselves as creatures with free will?

  DON

  On the free will question, I can confidently say that our brains are, for all intents and purposes, the same as those of our late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer ancestors, so whatever the free will situation was with them, so it is with us.

  Twenty-five years ago I mentioned to George Williams, one of the great evolutionary biologists of the 20th century, that many people make the argument that you suspect Henry was making, that womanizing wasn’t his fault; his genes made him do it. George seemed genuinely surprised to hear this, and said that he would have supposed that people would have the opposite reaction: “those impulses are just my genes talking, and I don’t have to obey them.”

  Evolutionary psychology can provide some insight into why we have the impulses we do, but it doesn’t tell us anything about how free we are to act on them or not. The impulses that we’re primarily talking about—sexual desire for new women, especially young pretty women—are impulses everyone knows exist, if they’re paying attention. All laws and rules and ethical injunctions exist to curb impulses that many or most or all people have; there are laws or rules against murder and theft, but there are no laws against eating rocks.

  I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the Post-its in Henry’s copy of The Evolution of Human Sexuality were there because he believed that an adaptationist account of the human male’s taste for sexual variety somehow meant that he was absolved of exercising choice; but it does no such thing.

  I asked Don if he felt that infidelity was a near inevitability in our modern culture of increased opportunity, restrained only by conscious, mindful effort. It seemed that Henry’s misadventures were a kind of primitive hunt. Especially after reading—and possibly misreading—Don’s book, he might have concluded that he was simply being a man, acting on healthy and in any event irresistible impulses. In our culture, the nature of risk has changed. What would have been an unacceptable risk in family-based hunter-gatherer bands is now quite acceptable in a community where small family groups function autonomously, and even anonymously, with fewer nosy, nagging elders and fewer societal restraints. Although our town turned out to be much like those ancient tightly bound communities.

  DON

  It’s important to keep in mind that the vast majority of living foragers (and other peoples as well) are polygynous, in the sense that some men have more than one wife and that polygyny is “permitted.” There can’t be any question that over the course of human evolutionary history some men sired offspring with women they weren’t married to, but a much more reliable way to increase reproduction was by being successful enough to acquire multiple wives. What I’m getting at is that the male psychology that often leads to affairs perhaps should be thought of more as a polygynous than an adulterous psychology. Where polygyny is normal and sanctioned and a sign as well as a perquisite of high status, things are different.

  Legitimate polygyny would have suited Henry very well. But, along with all the other fast changes in modern life, women’s expectations and options have shifted radically, in a flash, evolutionarily speaking. Reclusive Mormon cults aside, most modern women would not be content to live as one of a number of partners rearing one man’s children. Polyamory, the more hip approach to multipartnering, seems problematic as well. My conversations with a few practicing polyamorists suggest that we are hardwired
for jealousy—and overcoming that jealousy so we can have more partners can bring misery along with pleasure. Perhaps future generations will find a solution.

  What did I take away from my exchanges with Don Symons? I learned that we humans are unplanned and therefore imperfect. In our physical and psychological adaptations, we are more suited to that ancient time when we roamed the plains in family-based bands, hunting and gathering, moving with the seasons.

  We are not well adapted to this age of speed, technology, anonymity, and easy availability. Even the concepts of the monogamous couple and the nuclear family are new for us. Without the established rules of culture, religion, a nagging mom, or whatever we individually call moral grounding, we will likely succumb to our ancient impulses. We cannot easily restrain ourselves now that our urges can be so easily gratified. After my exchanges with Don, I felt a new appreciation for traditions like Buddhism, where the goal is to calm the body and, thus, calm the mind. Without understanding the physical mechanics of how the mind and body work, those monks did come to understand so much about how to cope with what we are and what we cannot change.

  Men and women can’t live with each other easily, but we must live together, otherwise we’ll all die out. So we must muddle along, not quite understanding each other. Couples fall in love and out of love, and in many cases it might be best to end unions. Whatever happens to couples, children must be cared for, and obligations fulfilled. There are honorable ways to end unions and honorable ways to live.

  Perhaps the project of conducting a relationship can remain a work in progress, an ever-changing, amoeba-like creature that must be fed and nurtured, occasionally tamed, but not overtamed. The trick, of course, is finding the balance between what we are in our essential nature—late Pleistocene men and women with cell phones, laptops, and fast cars—and what we can be when we live our lives with thoughtful and honest effort.

  sixteen

  October 2004

  When you are fully in your emotions, when they are simple and appealing

  enough to be in, and the distance is closed between what you feel and what

  you might also feel, then your instincts can be trusted.

  —RICHARD FORD,

  The Sportswriter

  Once I had made the decision to move, there were a few days of startling clarity, when I had a sense of the infinite possibilities of truly accepting change. One day, an “ordinary” day, still shines in my memory as one that gave me hope that other days like it would follow.

  On this weekday morning in October 2004, I wake up at 6:30 to get Liza ready for school. Sometimes, most times, we still sleep together. Before waking her, I enjoy looking at her resting hands, which more and more resemble my own, as they might have looked had I not bitten my nails when I was young. I am most pleased to see her peacefulness and the absence of the nervous habits that plagued me as a child. This reassures me as I begin my day. I have struggled to preserve her childhood. Wedged between a cat or two, I reach for the clock to turn off the alarm, disturbing a stuffed animal, one of the several that, along with the live cats, make the bed feel like a small petting zoo.

  We dress, and Liza spends some time brushing her hair, fussing over the part and the stray strands that pop up disobediently. I remember that age when you imagine that the waves in your hair are going to rise up like so many unruly elves and embarrass you at the lunch table. After she beats them into submission with hair goo and brush, we trot down to feed our cats, who circle and whine hopefully when they see me rummaging in the cupboard. I know my place in their world. I am the designated can opener.

  Once the cats are guzzling at their dishes, I cook some eggs, and Liza and I eat while discussing any of the topics of these days—the complex and ever-changing social dramas at school, why we are even on the earth anyway, how do batteries work? (Dunno, we’ll have to look that one up), how are snowflakes formed? (Ditto). What is gravity? (I forgot that physics lesson). And that old favorite, why is the sky blue? And what’s a rainbow? I have finally looked up those last two and can now discuss light refraction and absorption competently. We ponder daily the eternal question of why our cats’ poop is so smelly and why one in particular has a knack for dumping a big one just as we are ready to begin eating.

  Some mornings we edge into a discussion of the day Henry died, as Liza has an eidetic memory of the events of that afternoon and evening, which altered her life so completely. Over and over she asks me to explain why he died. My medical descriptions never vary, though more and more I feel, but cannot yet tell her, that the physical events that caused his death were part of a much larger picture. A spiritual and emotional collapse came first. Just at the end of his life, he might have tried to crawl out from under, but he lost his grip and slipped away.

  I keep an eye on the kitchen wall clock, which is set seven minutes fast, just confusing enough so that I will follow the time indicated without second-guessing. At 7:25 by the clock, we are pulling on our shoes and jackets and then skittering across the gravel drive to our wine-red station wagon for the short drive to her school van.

  I have spent much time in the parking lot where the van picks up the children in the mornings and drops them off in the afternoons. The site is the cracked asphalt lot behind the village health clinic. I like to park in the particular spot that offers a view of a bit of meadowy lawn straight ahead and an enormous and wonderfully ovoid purple beech tree to the left that is beautiful in every season. In the mornings, all activity is rushed and practical, but in the afternoons, when the bus is late (often), I have knitted sweaters or dozed in its shade on a spring or still warm autumn afternoon. We have enjoyed throwing snowballs well into spring, as the last March snow is preserved in the shade of the tree’s branches. Mountains in the near distance fade backward into layers of softer and cloudier blue-gray. Sometimes flocks of hawks or turkey buzzards cascade down from the hills after an unseen prey in a burst that always startles me. The afternoon sunsets are dramatic in winter, with fast-moving clusters of watery gray clouds.

  The passing seasons here are a movie I have watched like a time-lapse photography sequence: at the beginning of the school year, the purple leaves cascade into a ring at the foot of the beech tree; the leaves turn brown and blow away in blusters of wind rushing up from the river, leaving behind the bare skeleton that reminds me of the baobab trees I saw in Africa on my honeymoon. I feel lonely in this place, but it is a good kind of loneliness—I am spending time with myself, a person I am coming to know clearly and fully appreciate.

  I am rushed this morning. I need to leave for the city in a few hours, so I settle Liza into her van seat quickly. I kiss her goodbye, as always, delighting in the soft press of her mouth on mine. She extends her rosy lips with intention. I enjoy the kiss, wish her a good day, and remind her that Tanya will pick her up this afternoon. I walk off to my car as the van pulls away.

  The aisles of the grocery store are still empty at 7:30 A.M. The fruit and vegetable manager knows me by name, and I like talking with him. He is a man with a calling, who has absolutely improved my life, often giving me some exotic green or fruit to taste. I will genuinely miss him.

  I stand in the checkout line, just long enough to make me feel agitated, with my half gallons of milk and Tropicana, and a chocolate bar for later. I have confused and anxious feelings about the pile of documents waiting for me in the city, which represent the end of my life here. I am officially selling my house today, though Liza and I will stay on, as tenants, till the end of her school year. The clerk at the cash register looks tired and harassed, as hers is the only register open at this early hour. Things to do, train to catch. I tap my fingers on the black conveyor belt as the woman in front of me pays for her groceries, counting out loose change, while the clerk slowly bags her purchases.

  I remember a scene in a book I read recently, Long Quiet Highway. Natalie Goldberg watches her Zen teacher, Katagiri Roshi, standing on the street outside the Zen center in Minneapolis. Another student
is due to arrive to take Roshi to the airport for a scheduled conference. The student is late, and Natalie is getting worried and anxious that Roshi will miss his flight, as we all might do if we were late and impatient and normal humans. She describes the experience of watching him: he is standing but not waiting. He is experiencing the present moment, not feeling anxious about the future, over which he has no control.

  Standing, not waiting. I need something to focus on to keep me present. My eyes are drawn to two cobweb strands swaying gently from their attached points on a corner of the cash register. I look at them, enjoying the movement of their strangely beautiful forms. The breeze from the air-conditioning system gathers and releases the strands, and I marvel at their resilience. I note the light coating of dust on the strands. The cash register hasn’t been dusted in weeks, long enough for a spider to create an architectural wonder and then pack up and leave his home to move on to another, more fruitful location.

  I see that, having been through a year of loss and change, I will change still more in this next time of my life. I will need to get comfortable with that idea and struggle to find a way to move through all this with some calm, though calm is not especially my nature. At least now my life feels like my own, after a marriage filled with noise and conflict.