I highly recommend anything by J.M. Coetzee. Here he is receiving his Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. I especially love his Waiting For The Barbarians. A modern Kafkaesque novel that I reached for after 9/11 to explain the idiocy prevelant at that time.
Coetzee raises a great point in his acceptance speech. Something I feel deep down and a primal drive, Something so many of us innately feel.
We seek the approval of our loved ones. Our ambitions, our decisions, our lives dance to this organic wavelength’s rhythm. But it is a paradox because our loved ones for the most part, and especially our mothers, already love us unconditionally. But still, we have this deep impulse for their approval inside, the “boy inside the man”.
We lie to ourselves and say we are “self-made” and our actions are for great causes and reasons. But underneath, we are a child just wanting our mother’s approval, her love. I’m not feigning a Freudian psychoanalytical posture - it’s a real thing that drives so much of what happens in the world. We are, even in old age, still children running home to our moms saying, “Mommy, Mommy - look what I got!”
Coetzee’s speech, I watched recently and it reminded me of a poem I penned long ago, in my early poetic days. Finally dug it up using the internet archive, for your enjoyment or non-enjoyment. Hug your mom - she loves you!
Causa Sui - First Causes
You may think you’re doing it
for the money
for the fame
the respect that will tame
all those other whips out there
searing our backs.
You may think you’re doing it
to make the world better
to gain respect and garner
what little social gold this
hellish world may honor.
You may think you’re doing it
’cuz you love the applause
’cuz you’ve got a cause and
just can’t but do what you do
you’ve got honor and are
in bed with the true.
You might think you’re doing it
to get a nice house and a fast car
in a long, long driveway that belongs
to you and you alone.
You might have yourself convinced
that you’re doing it for your kids
to leave ‘em something and to make sure
they don’t have a reason to have
done you wrong.
You may think you’re doing it
to win at the game, fuel the fame
to be at the top of the heap and able
to be the one who shouts out blame.
You might think you’re doing it
for reasons deep down n’ true
rhyme and reasons you can’t explain.
But you’d be wrong.
It’s all about pleasing mother
you are but a breast led boy wonder.
There’s a little boy still inside
wanting to be loved and eyed
by a mother with arms open and
a love a hundred universes wide.
And it is a pity.
All your efforts to please her,
are so in vain.
"Cuz your mother
she never needed reasons to
make her mind up that you
already were
her number 1.
What a waste of a life!
Winning, again and again
just to win a prize you already had
but didn’t know then.
Unconditional love is
a hard thing to see.
We are so suspicious of
all things that are give free.
