The Ones Who Leave, and Why

I know of this couple. They seemed to form a strong partnership. They built a life together for almost ten years. They have a pet, and perhaps thought of having children one day. One day she was chirping around him, looking light and happy; the next she is leaving. How this could happen? I do not know. But I know WHAT happened. It breaks my heart and I want to scream “What is wrong with you?”.

For the past three years we have witnessed the deliberate extermination of humans more massively than we ever have. We have seen families fall apart more over divergent opinions, than were killed by the death flu, social networks have imploded over this Crisis, and we are about to face the greatest economic meltdown of our lifetime and all the generations before and hopefully after, if somebody will be left.

Some of the many means of getting rid of humans have been the progressive sterilization of men, women and children, the destruction of the family unit as a foundational block of society, and a culture that puts the word self- before everything while making one believe that they have the unlimited freedom to do the self-thing.

My mother used to hammer into my young head to never be dependent on a man. I grew up at the dawn of the Age of the Self which was the precursor of the Epidemic of Loneliness which the British government decided a few years ago to fight by forming a Ministry of Loneliness (!). My mother had her reasons, but I kept wondering what was fundamentally wrong with any form of inter-dependence? Aren’t we all supposed to be relying on each other for survival,…ultimately? Were all the wars already forgotten? The years of reconstruction? Were we not surrounded by communities, families working hand in hand?

We also live in a culture that has promoted and celebrated Individualism for the past 50 years. We went from one car per family to each their own car. There is nothing we can not achieve alone, and we do not need anybody to be happy or fulfilled. This short sighted view of Life and its possible meaning and purpose is perfectly suited and natural for you when you are between 17 and 37 (women) 47 (men). It corresponds to the slice of life in which you indeed become who you will be…in order to be…well…what will you be when everyone you once knew did what you did, and just moved to more exciting shores hoping to feed some more on some superficial and impermanent pleasures? A father, a son, a husband, a brother, a friend even? There will be nobody left to be these things to.

“Familles, je vous hais! Andre Gide wrote in 1897 in “Fruits of the Earth”. This violent cry against the family is only part of a full quote that carries more longing for a family home and the grief of his absence than it sounds like the victorious scream of one who has liberated himself from its oppressive chains:

“Familles, je vous hais! Foyers clos, Portes refermees, possession jalouse du bonheur.”

Families, I hate you! Closed homes Doors locked Jealous possession of happiness

Gide lost his father at age eleven, was educated in boarding schools and by private educators and “gouvernantes”, discovered his homosexuality in a strict puritanical environment, left to explore his sexuality and freedom of any kind, came back to white-marry a woman and settled as a mayor of his town, with regained respectability. After her death in 1938 and the end of WWII he began to realize the value of tradition…and perhaps even family…which he had. Just not a normal one.

I don’t know why this friend’s wife left, but I know what is lost: an entire family tree. One more.