David Brooks "The Social Animal" and My Mother, Mary McCormick

The central thesis of David Brooks “The Social Animal” is that the linear, logical decision making part of ourselves is but an illusion and that our abilities to read the character and intention of others is at the core of our being. He describes a typical couple’s courtship and child raising through the eyes of current scientific evidence.

One of the factoids that hit home was that marital satisfaction is a U shaped curve. High satisfaction when first married, the low point when children are in adolescence and again a high point when the children leave. He cites an incredible wealth of data to support the depth of unconscious capability to foster bonding between mother and child. Of course, this bonding is kind of obvious, especially when the cold fact that the average mother loses 700 hours of sleep during the first year. And, more importantly, most of the greedy little guys and gals escape with their mother’s love unscathed.

He documents that there are critical exposures that influence motivation and passion. For me, one of those was the garage of Andy Anderson. It was on the street on the way to Saint Rose of Lima, where I walked to school most days. All kinds of weird antennas were about the house and I could see some kind of mysterious radio complex in the far corner. Mind you, this was way before cell phones and color TV.

I guess my age was close to eleven or twelve. Something about the mystery of being able to communicate with people around the world fascinated me. I got up the nerve to walk up the driveway and talk to Andy. He was a big man, perhaps six foot five and 250 pounds and an obvious leader of men. He told me in no uncertain terms that there was no future in my wanting to become a ham operator until I learned the Morse Code. I went home with my tail between my legs. How was I going to pass this juggernaut?

My mother consoled me and said we would learn the Morse Code together. My father, who was studying to be an electronics mechanic, used a j38 key, batteries and a buzzer from a door alarm to make a practice setup.

My mother studied the dots and dashes, which compose the letters of the Morse alphabet. She would send the characters hour after hour and I would dutifully decode them back to English. This was in addition to making meals, keeping the house and looking after the rest of my three siblings.

My father and I both passed our license exam, which consisted of code and electronics theory. David Brook’s book brought back some of the intense emotions that I felt when stymied by this hurdle of dots and dashes. It took a mother’s love to find a way for her son to reach his goal.

David Brooks makes this great thought. “If the outer mind highlights the power of the individual, the inner mind highlights the power of relationships and the invisible bonds between people. If the outer mind hungers for status, money and applause, the inner mind hungers for harmony and connections- those moments when self-consciousness fades away and a person is lost in a challenge, a cause, the love of another or the love of God.”