They’re one. But they’re not the same.
As the dad to identical twins I am fascinated – in a pseudo-scientific way, you understand – to observe their development and interaction and to hatch pet theories as a result.
Identical twins have long been the focus of medical research into issues of nature and nurture. (Ours are part of a nationwide study being done at UCL into childhood obesity – and one of them is doing his level best to break the scales.) As a non-scientific parent, I like to develop theories of my own in parallel.
One pet theory which gains strength in my mind over time is to do with the fact that the pair seem to have been allotted one pool of emotional resources with which to negotiate life. It’s a pool they share out between them in an ever-shifting dance that sees one in the ascendency for a bit and then the other. And so on.
What intrigues me about this is that it is not the case that you can say – having observed their behaviour on a particular day – that one is bullish and the other timid in character. Because in a week’s time you might find they have exactly reversed those roles.
In a culture that presses us to think of the individual as being the locus of all meaning and resource and potential, our twins remind me that emotional and psychological resources and character are as much gifted to groups of people and communities as they are to individuals. Indeed, if you take this view, it can take the pressure off the beleaguered individual (who simply doesn’t have the resources to cope with life in their own strength), fostering instead a sense of the interdependent, complementarity of persons in community in the face of the dominant competitive view that pushes us always to define ourselves over against the other.
For a while now one twin has eaten poorly, spoken little and generally moped about in the shadow of his brother. But over the last few days the dynamic has shifted and his appetite is returning, his speech is becoming more fluent and confident again and he’s starting to move ahead. While the other brother takes his foot off the pedal and seemingly has a rest for a while.
It’s a pet theory. But, like all the pets I’ve ever had, I’m growing increasingly fond of it. It seems to me that this shifting sharing of a single emotional resource pool played out in front of us each day might well speak helpfully into a culture seemingly hell-bent (at precisely and impossibly the same time):
- 1) to homogenise us – scared of difference
and - 2) individuate and separate us – exalting our individual identity and pre-eminence above all other calls on our personhood
We’re one. But we’re not the same. We get to carry each other. Carry each other.
U2, One, Achtung Baby
