Laura: Well now I don't read books a day because I spend so much time working with our people, with our forums, and doing research, that I spend a lot of time scanning and reading things from the internet, or reading scholarly papers and so forth, and I do most of my - I don't know, I guess it would probably amount to a book a day, the amount of reading I do, because I really do a lot of reading, but it's not in books, it's mostly online. And then when I go to bed at night I spend a half hour to an hour reading whatever my current research topic is. Usually they're very dry books that nobody else in the world reads, or very few, only scholars read them. But I read them, and I actually enjoy them!
Joe: That's the masochist in you!
Laura: Yes, it's the 'do it no matter how bad it hurts'.
Joe: It's that protestant work ethic.
Juliana: Speaking of masochism, it seems that a lot of people write to us about why is nothing easy? Why do you have to pay so much? Why isn't there any free lunch? And it seems to me that, from what you're saying, since you were little, you kept that curiosity, almost like a child has, to learn, and learn, and learn, and assimilate. And that comes, also, with a price, but you're not afraid of that, or you learned somehow that suffering leads to something that is much more valuable. And we still keep getting this reaction that "oh it's depressing" or "I just want the easy way". How did you come to realise that that wasn't your path?
Laura: Oh, that's kind of a tough one. Well I'll give you, I mean, there were many incidents that I observed in my life where people took the easy way and it always ended badly, I could see it. And the thing was, like I just mentioned, I think probably one of the most amazing gifts that I was given genetically, and for which I am enormously grateful, is my memory. And I wouldn't forget when I saw these situations. Somebody would do something, something would happen, they would take the easy way out, or "Oh it'll be fine", or "Least said, soonest mended", and then disaster would follow. And it was like, couldn't they see that coming? They took the easy way, they wanted to feel good, and disaster followed.
And you know, it really struck me very powerfully. When you go through life observing, and of course you read a lot of stories, and you read biographies, and I read lots and lots of history, and over and over again, whenever I would read a story about somebody who took the easy way, or wanted to feel good, it was always disaster! I remembered it, it just piled up in my head like a giant mountain building in my mind, that whenever people do that, it's bad! It's obviously bad. And I could see it also happening in people's lives around me. And some of those instances, some of them would be kind of personal, but I can give one little example.
I had a girl friend when I was just out of high school. And she was already married and had two or three children - she was a little bit older than I was. And I was at her house one day, and her little girl was diabetic, had become diabetic very early in her life, so it was like type I diabetes, and she was already on insulin, and she had lots of problems. She had two or three other children and her husband. And the thing was, this girl wasn't allowed to have many things because of her illness, but the family didn't see any reason that they should deny themselves what she couldn't have, just to give her moral support, or in solidarity with her.
So there was always a lot of the things she couldn't eat, cookies and candies, things like that, that she kept on top of the refrigerator. And I was there, and the little girl was crying "Mommy, I want some candy! I gotta have some candy!"
"No, no. If you have candy you'll have to increase your medication, you may have to go to the doctor, it could make you sick...."
"Oh mommy, I gotta have it..."
And then after five minutes of this or so - of course I wondered why it was all there, why doesn't the family give all that up? Give her support? Why do they put it on the refrigerator where she can see it? And finally after five minutes of crying for it, her mother says "Oh alright, but you know what's gonna happen, you're gonna have to have an extra shot, da da da..."
And she gave this child with diabetes candy, which she shouldn't have had, knowing what it was going to do to her, and setting up a pattern in her life where doing the easy thing, taking the way that was easy, feeling good, was deadly. And I remember that incident, and it kind of froze in my mind forever, because it symbolised everything and everybody that I had ever seen or known about who took the easy way. And I asked her, I said "Why did you do that?" And she says "But I love her so much, I can't say no."
It just staggered my mind that she could say "I love her so much", and what that kind of love meant. Because, as it turned out, this child died rather young.
Niall: And what's happening there? Is she not able to foresee - the mother - the consequences? She must have been told explicitly...
Laura: Well certainly she was told explicitly what would happen if she didn't do some monitoring and not let things get out of hand. It was just horrifying. It was horrifying to me. And how many people are like that? "I can't tell her no, I can't say no, I want to feel good", because more than anything else the mother wanted to feel good. She didn't want her child to say "Mommy, I don't like you, I hate you", and, you know...
Joe: Well it kind of involves a certain fairly uncommon and pretty deep understanding of human psychology as well, or it would require that for a parent in that situation to act in the right way, to know that, in a general sense, human beings will very often demand things that aren't good for them, or want things that aren't good for them. And if someone is in a position of responsibility over them, or a friend, or even someone who can give advice, kind of should give advice to a person to save them from themselves sometimes, because people don't always make the right decisions, right? So it's kind of like, just because someone says "I really, really want this, will you help me to do it?", you don't just go along and do it because they're your friend if you can see that it's bad for them. I mean it seems fairly prosaic in a way, but so many people just give in; can't say no.
Laura: They want to feel good. And it's particularly difficult in the parent-child relationship, because it's mostly about narcissism. "I want my child to make me feel good, and when the child is not making me feel good I want to do whatever it is", even to the point of harming the child's health. And I don't know if it takes really deep psychology to understand that, but it obviously was a little deeper than what she could understand.
Joe: Well at least a bit of reflection.
Laura: Yeah, but people don't reflect and they don't think, and more than anything, this is the thing. More than anything I saw that people wanted to feel good. That theme repeated over and over again in things that I was observing in other people's lives, and, you know...
