Oxytocin - closeness and intimacy for creativity
Oxytocin - closeness and intimacy for creativity
Have you ever heard of Oxytocin? I probably heard someone call it the love drug in passing, but I had very little idea what it was.
Oxytocin is a natural hormone released as I understand it, largely through human contact. My greatest reason to know about it was that it helps in labour. As it is released it leads to an increase and intensifying of contractions, which leads to, often, a quicker and easier birth. Turns out cuddling, touching, massage, etc. can actually help the body do what it needs to do. The baby already begins this hormone’s flow as his head pushes through, but the more the better. The interesting thing is that it is one of the only hormones that has a positive feedback loop, meaning the more your body creates the more it wants to create.
On a very basic level, as closeness can lead to arousal, especially in romantic relationships, which then leads to sex and procreation, we can see that closeness and intimacy lead to a true kind of creativity. True and meaningful relationship is essential to our creativity. Even if we are introverted and believe that is a part of our core identity (which is only a limited perspective), the reality is that we still need one another to be creative and to share that creativity. This is most true for our relationship with God. Whether we want to or not, we all have a relationship with God, because we have life (which comes from him). That created life connected with God gives us all the capacity for creation, but the sad reality is that so much of our creation isn’t truly creative, meaning that it doesn’t benefit others or lead people, the world, culture to true goodness and life. This can be a real problem as creations often guide culture and us more then we realize. We need God to guide us to what is truly good and helpful.
Closeness and relationships also leads to less painful and easier creation. This is most evident in the literal process of giving birth - when this closeness is not there the doctors will often administer Oxytocin. We can also think about this in terms of working beside eachother in a field or when creation itself seems to be helping in our creativeness or when our mind, body and spirit aline to see something beautiful and create it. Again, this is most true in our relationship with God as he is the source of creativity and well everything. The closer we are to him the more creative we can become, especially if that is the Charism we are meant for (but even if not). The curse of leaving the garden of Eden was that the pain of creation would increase. The blessing of closeness with God is that it will decrease.
On another note: this same hormone, Oxytocin, plays a part in arousal, romantic relationships, trust in general, recognition, and the mother-baby bond. We could dig a lot more into what the broad purpose of this hormone tells us about relationships in general, our need for friendship intimacy (not just romantic or sexual), and how closeness helps us truly see one another and the world. If this hormone is the same for general trust and intimacy, it also puts a bigger question on how we discern between sexual attraction and friendly intimacy. Each of these I think has a gospel message, but I will save that for another time
