I Just Wanna Be Close To You

There is something very biological about wanting to be close to our parents. Even when we are adults, independent, capable and perfectly able to manage our own lives, there can remain a quiet pull toward them. We may want to hear their voice, sit beside them, eat a meal with them, tell them something ordinary that happened during the day, or simply know that they are there. We often explain this as love or attachment. And yes, it is love. It’s also attachment. But it is also something much deeper. Our need for connection with our parents begins before we have the actual words for connection, before we have an idea of family, and before we know anything about ourselves. It begins with the simple fact that we enter the world through relationship. A relationship with our mother and our father. A human baby cannot survive alone. Unlike many animals, we are born remarkably dependent. Our brains and bodies continue developing rapidly after birth, and much of that development happens within relationships. A baby needs another human being for food, warmth, protection and care. But something else happens through this closeness. The baby is learning about the world. So, what happens when a baby cries which is technically the main way of communication, seeking and connection? A face appears right? That face speaks and soothes the baby. Its arms hold the baby and rock the baby. The baby feels safe and connected. Because someone responded to its cry. Hence the baby gradually begins to discover that the world is not just a collection of objects it can see and touch or just a world of different sensations. It is also a place inhabited by other beings who respond to its needs and wants. And it is here where science and philosophy quietly meet.

Scientifically, it is relationships that provide the conditions in which the developing nervous system learns to regulate itself and the developing brain learns how to interact with the world. But philosophically, another person is present before we have even developed a clear sense of “I.” And so all of us begin our lives begin embedded in relationship. We definitely do not begin life as isolated individuals who later decide to form relationships. Our parents are the first bridge to the world around us. For a child, the parent is initially much more than a mother or father. It’s only through the parent that a child encounters language, touch, food, faces, sounds, boundaries, customs, stories and countless small rules about how life works. Simply put, we learn about what is around us first from our parents. A parent points to something and gives it a name-

This is a tree.

This is hot.

This is home.

This is food.

This is a dog.

This is your grandmother.

This is how we celebrate.

This is how we speak to one another.

Bit by bit, an enormous and confusing world becomes understandable. The child is not simply being cared for. The child is being introduced to existence. And perhaps this is one reason our connection with our parents can remain meaningful long after we no longer need them to physically keep us alive. Because they were the first and only ones there at the beginning of our becoming. Before self-regulation, there is only co-regulation as we have learnt from the previous blogs.

Now there is also a very practical reason why human beings seek closeness. A young child cannot regulate every aspect of their internal state independently. For the developing nervous system relies heavily on interaction with caregivers. Being held, soothed, spoken to and responded to can help an infant settle from states of distress or arousal. Over thousands of ordinary interactions, the child gradually develops greater capacity to regulate themselves. This is one reason the presence of a familiar person can still have a calming effect on us as adults. We don’t consciously say, “My autonomic nervous system requires the presence of this particular human being.” We simply feel better when someone familiar is nearby. The science does not mean that every parent-child relationship is perfectly regulating, nor that every adult needs to remain physically close to their parents. It simply tells us something fundamental about being human. We are built for connection, and we discover ourselves through other people.

But there is another layer that is harder to measure but impossible to ignore. And that is the question-

How do we first know that we exist?

Let’s explore this. A baby cannot look into a mirror and construct a philosophical concept of self. The earliest sense of self develops only through interaction. Someone looks at us. Someone responds to our movements. Someone recognizes our sounds.  Someone notices when we are hungry.  Someone delights when we smile. And the child gradually experiences-

I do something, and something happens.

I make a sound, and someone responds.

I reach out, and someone comes closer.

I cry, and someone touches me.

And so, the self develops within this ongoing exchange. Philosophers have long wrestled with the idea that we cannot completely understand ourselves in isolation. We become aware of ourselves partly through being encountered and recognized by others. And our parents are our first witnesses. They see us before we have achieved anything. Before our education or profession. Before our accomplishments.  Before the identity we construct as adults. Only they knew us when we were simply becoming. And so maybe the reason why their presence can carry an emotional weight for us is because they are connected to a version of ourselves that existed before we had to explain who we were. In simple words- Our parents connect us to time. Not only that, through our parents we also discover that we came from somewhere. A space.

There were people before us and there will be people after us.  Our life is not an isolated event appearing out of nowhere.  We are part of a chain. Biologically, we inherit genetic material from previous generations. Culturally, we inherit languages, customs, beliefs, recipes, stories and ways of living. Some things are consciously passed down. Others are absorbed simply by growing up within a particular family and culture. This gives the relationship with our parents an almost existential quality compromising of two physical components- time and space. Think of it this way-

When we sit with an aging parent, we are not only sitting with another human being. We are sitting, in a very tangible sense, with part of our own history. Their memories may contain places we have never seen. Their stories may reach back to people we never met. Their childhood existed before ours began. And suddenly the abstract idea of ancestry has a face. The spiritual meaning of origin. This is where a spiritual perspective can enter without needing to become mystical.  Across many traditions, human beings have reflected on where they come from and what connects one generation to another. And our parents can be understood as our immediate relationship to origin. They are the people through whom we entered this particular life. This birth.

Whether one believes in a soul, reincarnation, divine purpose or simply the mystery of existence, there remains something astonishing about the fact that none of us chose the circumstances of our arrival. We simply arrived.  We were given a body.  We were given a name. We entered a family, a culture, a language and a particular moment in history. And our parents are part of that entire mystery of life.

From this perspective, the desire to be close to them can be understood as more than dependency. It can be a desire to remain connected to where our individual story began. Not because we cannot stand alone. But because belonging matters. We need relationships, not only for survival but also for meaning. And belonging asks a very simple human question-

Where do I fit?

Family is usually our first answer.  This does not mean every family remains close, or that biological relationships automatically become healthy relationships. Human relationships are complicated. But the basic human desire to belong is real. We want to know that somewhere there are people with whom our existence has a history. This is why even small family rituals can become important. A particular meal. A festival. A phrase only your family uses. An old photograph. A story told repeatedly. A particular way your mother makes tea. The way your father calls your name. These things may look insignificant or even silly from the outside. But they are not insignificant to the person living them. For that person they are threads of continuity. But then as time passes we simply grow up.  The relationship cannot remain what it was. A child must become an adult. The person who once needed a parent to cross the road eventually drives themselves. The child who once needed instructions eventually makes their own decisions. Independence is not the opposite of connection. That distinction matters.

Healthy adulthood is not about becoming completely detached from where we came from. It is about being able to stand on our own while remaining capable of connection. We move away and, ideally, we return differently. As children, we may need our parents to guide us. As adults, we may simply want their company. The relationship changes from dependence to relationship between two human beings. And sometimes during the course of healing from wounds for the first time, we can begin to see our parents not only as “Mummy” and “Papa,” but as people who once had childhoods of their own, hopes of their own, fears, limitations and unfinished dreams. When that happens, we stop seeing them only through the role they played in our lives. We begin to see the human being behind the role.

It is important to remember this that the longing to be close is not a weakness. There is a tendency in modern life to equate independence with emotional distance. We are encouraged to be self-sufficient. To need nobody. To move on. But needing connection is not immaturity. It is an intrinsic part of being human.  The adult who wants to sit beside an elderly parent is not necessarily regressing into childhood.  Sometimes it is simply responding to something profoundly ordinary -

You are one of the people from whom my story began.

And that can be enough. We don’t always need to explain the feeling. Sometimes we just need to honour it. Perhaps this is what connection ultimately means. Honouring and reverencing the parent as we say in Family Constellations therapy.  Scientifically, our relationship with our parents is rooted in attachment, development, learning, regulation and our evolutionary history. Philosophically, it raises questions of identity, recognition, belonging, origin and continuity. And spiritually, it can remind us that our individual life did not begin as an isolated thing.  That it began within a web of life. And that we, as pieces of life came through other bodies. We were held by other hands. We learned language from other mouths. We learned the world through other eyes. And eventually, we became ourselves. So then growing up is not about cutting the thread that connects us to our parents. Perhaps it is about changing the way we hold it.  As children, we hold on because we need them. As adults, we may hold on because we love them. And one day, if we are fortunate, we hold on simply because we understand something we could not understand as children-

We are separate lives, but we were never completely separate stories. Never.