A few weeks ago, Lisa Nowak was relatively unheard of. Sure, everyone at NASA knew of her, after all, she was a respected astronaut and a loving wife and mother of three. Now, her name is synonymous with an attempted murder and insane jealousy. How did this successful, seemingly independent woman become the laughing stock of our nation? By being in love, that’s how.
On Feb. 5, Nowak drove 900 miles from her Texas home to an Orlando airport (wearing diapers, no less, so she wouldn’t waste any time relieving herself) to confront Colleen Shipman, whom Nowak believed was a competitor for the affections of fellow astronaut William Oefelein. Mind you, Oefelein isn’t Nowak’s husband. In a statement, Nowak claims that their relationship was “more than a working relationship but less than a romantic relationship.” Well, any self respecting college student can decode that statement in a second.
According to police reports, Nowak had many suspicious items in her car, like a pepper spray package, an unused BB gun cartridge, latex gloves, an opened package for a Buck knife, and, possibly the most creepy thing of all: Shipman’s home address and e-mails between Shipman and Oefelein. Police also found a love letter, written to Oefelein from Nowak.
Well, how much more obvious can a case like this get? Hopefully, Nowak will get some psychiatric help and will face justice for the crimes she was undoubtedly about to commit.
What is wrong with people these days? And what is it about love that drives relatively normal people to do the most irrational things? There are many guesses.
According to an article in the Feb. 11 issue of The New York Times, Helen Fisher is an anthropologist at Rutgers University, and she recently did an experiment with 15 individuals who had been madly in love, and then suddenly dumped. The result? Through M.R.I scans of the brain, Fisher concluded that there was decreased blood to the area of the brain associated with decision making. But there was increased activity in the dopamine reward system, which is the “wanting-seeking system” which is associated with taking big risks. “You’ve got a person who has enormous energy and intense motivation and craving, with focused attention, willing to take huge risks, in physical pain, trying to control their anger, and obsessively thinking about someone,” she said. “It’s a bad combination.”
So you see, love really is all about chemistry. The way our brains work directly corresponds with our actions, whether they are crazy or not.
So what possessed Lisa Nowak? Was her brain overcompensating with dopamine? Was she just a woman possessed? Who knows? This is just one example of a woman struck by cupid’s arrow. There’s the Texan woman who ran over her cheating husband with her Mercedes. Or there’s the skydiver who was detained last month in Belgium. She supposedly sabotaged another woman’s parachute, then watched her die, all because she suspected the woman was sleeping with her boyfriend.
There is a fine line between normalcy and obsession. We’ve all felt hurt or betrayed, we’ve felt jealousy and rage. But there’s a limit to how far you’ll go.
It’s safe to say that nowadays, people do the craziest things is the name of love. Let’s hope that tomorrow you’re not one of them.