Our Human Need for Attachment

In the Virginia Tech slayings, we have ourselves another Columbine. And as I watch the news and see the face of the young man who took his peers' lives and then his own, I wonder what happened to him. Was he born with a propensity toward violence or was he forced into such strict lines by his parents and teachers that he burst through those lines with a final expression of profound frustration? Only two of a myriad of explanations I could concoct.

I juxtapose that news against the Montana Montessori Educator's Association Convention I attended at the beginning of April with my daughter. At it, Maurine Bright, Montessori teacher and parenting coach said that a child's most profound need is to be attached. Before "Take out the trash"; "Where are your socks!"; "You forgot again!" there are three required ingredients to create attachment. They are eye contact, a nod and a smile. (www.gordonneufeld.com) It's a way of saying "I see you. You matter." Or if you've read General Theory of Love (a prosaic account blending knowledge of our biology and psychology), when we nod, make eye contact, and smile, we are creating limbic resonance with those we love.

I don't believe we can know all of the mysteries of the young man who violently and without recourse took the lives of the men and women at Virginia Tech. I do believe that in this world of pressure to achieve, to get in the right school, to have that career--in the world of demands, we have a need to connect, to allow the dust to settle, to level the waters between us and have the sense of 'we' that is within our reach. As human beings, we need to breath next to someone loved and feel their heart beat so we know, in our bodies and at a cellular level, that we are not alone. We are spinning on an orb in space, connected.