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What Makes Us Happy!

Lori and Reba Schappel are conjoined twins. They were born joined in their heads with two bodies. They share the same frontal lobe but surprisingly have individual and separate thoughts. They are unable to walk together and Lori carries Reba on a high-rise wheeled chair. Reba, the smaller one, sings. She often performs in front of audiences clapping, dancing with her hands, as she is unable to move her body very well. Lori, Reba’s conjoined twin, sways back and forth, occasionally swinging Lori’s chair around in choreograph with the music. Their performance is a bit freaky at first but Reba’s soothing voice quickly catches on. She sings well.

Lori and Reba say that they are happy, very happy, in fact. Of course, no one believed them until researchers checked it out. It was true. As far as they could tell, Lori and Reba were living happy lives as well as many other communicating conjoined twins. This got the researchers thinking: “How is that possible?” How do these abnormal and in many instances grotesque looking conjoined twins find happiness in this world! Everyone holds the belief that conjoined lives are so utterly worthless that dangerous separation surgeries are an ethical imperative. But Lori and Reba and many conjoined twins would not have it any other way. In an exhaustive search of medical literature, a medical historian found the “desire to remain together to be so widespread among communicating conjoined twins as to be practically universal.”* In fact, vast majority of the adult conjoined twins that were surgically separated, regret the operation. Most wish they were back together. The movie “Stuck On You” starring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear tried to capture this bizarre experience when at the end of the movie, after they were separated through successful operation, they would return to each other, Velcro in hand, to be rejoined.

It’s difficult for me to imagine that the conjoined twins are actually happy. It’s hard to grasp that such a grotesque existence can experience any real joy, excitement, mirth, laughter and happiness.

The studies on conjoined twins, however, reveal something very basic and simple about human nature. Being “stuck” to another human being appears crucial to our happiness. In psychology this is called “secure attachment,” now considered the most essential requirement in human well being from birth to death. “Secure” means not easily undone. “Attachment” means simply attached or stuck. Conjoined twins are, in fact, securely attached to one another.

It is true that I am happier when I am with someone than alone. I would be happier, though, if I could be next to someone, just stuck to that person, securely attached, without the pressure to be interesting, to have something to say, to help or to be helped, or to be somebody important. After all, the conjoined twins appear to enjoy an important advantage. They don’t experience the possibility of separation. That feeling, apparently is so important that it is not only the source of their happiness, but they want to be rejoined, Velcro in hand, should the society intervene and dictate how their lives should be separated.

* Page 31, Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, 2007.

Dr. Carl Shin is a physician at a private practice for chronic pain management in Sacramento, CA. He graduated from Andrews University in 1988, with a degree in Theology. After earning a bachelors degree in biochemistry from UGA in 1991, he graduated from Loma Linda Medical School in 1995 and completed a Physical Med and Rehab residency in 1999. He also did his Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania in 2000.


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