An unfamiliar ache

In my mother’s embrace, I first understood the meaning of love, not as a mere word but as something that transcends language and definition. My mother’s love is one of the few things I’ve never questioned. But as we move toward a future ruled by artificial intelligence, I wonder if the meaning of motherly love will remain essential or if it will fade into obsolescence. 

As history has shown, our pursuit of technological advancement often pulls us further from our primal instincts. Emotions become emojis, VR replaces real-life interactions, and now, even human memory is outsourced to machines. In the age of AI, will instincts like intuition and endearment still hold value, or will we discard them in favor of pure logic? 

With breakthroughs in biotechnology and AI-driven medicine, some scientists predict that aging could one day be treated as a disease rather than an inevitability. If death by old age becomes preventable, won’t our emotional fluctuations be modified as well? When that time comes, when humanity is at a crossroad in embracing near-immortality, will we redefine what it means to have a fulfilling life? 

Neural implants like Elon Musk’s Neuralink suggest a future where brain-AI interfaces are essential to human interaction. But if AI-enhanced individuals become the new standard, will remaining fully human mean falling behind? If my mother had a Neuralink implant, would she still hold the same pride in me? Or would a machine tell her I’m not worth it? Right now we are on the brink of redefining what it means to be human. But amidst this progress, what happens to the intangible aspects of our existence like motherly love, connection, and the deep bond between a mother and child? Can these primal emotions, formed in a biological past, survive a post-human future? 

Artificial intelligence is advancing at a pace that brings us closer than ever to creating sentience. When that moment arrives, can we still call ourselves the same species? Will we still be Homo sapiens, or something closer to gods? Yuval Noah Harari speculates about “Homo Deus”—a much superior human model” (2017: 312). But if intelligence alone defines godhood, what happens to the experience of being human? 

As human interactions become increasingly digital, our connection to physical intimacy may erode. Then, will we still long for a mother’s embrace? Or will we see it as outdated? Perhaps, in a world optimized for efficiency, emotional attachments will be viewed as unnecessary burdens. In my pursuit of this question, I imagined asking an AI to define humanity in a word, and I like to think it would say “Ma”; something so fundamental, so intimate, that we often overlook it. 

It sent me spiraling into nostalgia. When I was very young, even before kindergarten, my mom sparked my love for learning. She gave me a children's magazine filled with puzzles, and I loved it. Before long, I outgrew it, so she bought me something more advanced. It was challenging,

but with her guidance and support, I learned to read early, before I had even set foot in a classroom. By the time I started school, I was ahead of my peers, and my mom took great pride in it. 

When my sister was born, I noticed a shift in our relationship. It wasn’t a bad change, just different. My mom became busier, and I learned to be independent. I showered on my own, prepared my own things, and understood at that young age that her attention was no longer mine alone. Yet she never stopped being proud of me. If anything, she admired the responsibility I took upon myself. 

Now, nearing thirty, I find myself looking at life from the opposite perspective. When I was young, I felt ahead. Today, I feel behind. People my age are settling into careers, starting families, becoming millionaires, and traveling the world. Even my sister is halfway across the globe, chasing her dreams. I thought I’d navigate adulthood easily, but instead, I feel like I’ve fallen short of every expectation. And yet, through it all, my mom remains unwaveringly proud of me, just as she was when I first learned to read and shower on my own. 

As I matured, I began to see the weight of the burdens my mom carried. Growing up, I admired her pride in me, but I never fully grasped the sacrifices behind it. Now I wonder if, by the world’s standards, pride should be reserved for achievement. Should success be measured in milestones? If that is the case, why does she still see me as someone worth being proud of? 

What I don’t understand is what my mom truly feels. Why she carries these burdens the way she does. Why, despite everything, she continues to hold onto them as if simply having me around is enough. Even when I believed I had failed, she never wavered. 

Maybe love doesn’t need logic to define its meaning. Maybe, for her, just having me around is enough. 

Writing this reminds me of Everything Everywhere All at Once. In an infinite multiverse, there are versions of us who made better choices, lived better lives, had better children and became better people. But at its core, the film is not about endless possibilities. It is about a mother choosing to love her child, not because she is the best version of a daughter, but simply because she is hers. 

That is what I see in my own mother. Like in Everything Everywhere All at Once, love is not about choosing the best version of something. Like Evelyn, I do not think she would choose differently. Love is not about perfection. It is not about having the best possible version of something. It is about choosing, again and again, the people who matter. 

If AI and other new discoveries surpasses us in intelligence, what remains uniquely human? Perhaps it is not our logic or reasoning, but our ability to imbue everything with meaning. Unlike machines, we do not process data; we experience it. 

Roland Barthes argued that meaning is never fixed. Meanings are created through personal interpretation. A photograph is not just an image. It is a doorway to multifarious memories and emotions. To me, an old photograph of my mother smiling is not just a picture. To me it is warmth, security, and love. AI can analyze pixels, but can it feel what that photograph means to me? A machine sees mother as a word. I see mother as a lifetime of memories. A machine can define love. We feel it. 

Some truths change as our understanding evolves, yet a mother’s love resists being reduced to a mere sign. It is not bound by language, logic, or even collective ideals. It exists only in the lived experience of a mother and her child. But how long will that remain true? 

We live in an era where AI shapes our thoughts, our choices, and even our emotions. Yuval Noah Harari speaks of a future where we will no longer be homo sapiens, where intelligence transcends biology. Maybe one day, the truth will no longer be personal. Instead of millions of subjective experiences, reality may be dictated by a single, collective mind. If that future comes, where does a mother’s love fit? 

Some truths are undeniable. The laws of physics govern the universe. One plus one will always equal two, unless seen from a vantage point beyond human perception. But meaning, love, and memory do not belong to the realm of equations. If we transcend what it means to be human, will we still remember what it feels like to be loved? 

One day, we may advance enough to decode the precise formula for love. We may unravel the true algorithm of a mother’s embrace. But by then, would we still feel it? Would we still understand it? Would we still cherish it? Or would post-human intelligence deem it obsolete, an artifact of an outdated species? 

If I had to choose between absolute knowledge and forgetting my mother, I would rather remain human. Imperfect. Fleeting. Capable of pain and loss. If that is what it takes to remember her, to still know what it feels like to be loved by her, then I would choose this life, flawed and finite, over a ‘godhood’ devoid of feeling. 

Perhaps one day, humanity will evolve past emotion, past memory, past the need for something as fragile as love. But if there is one thing that resists that fate, that resists an objective truth, it is a mother’s embrace. No equation can render its meaning absolute. It may not be ideal. It is the essence. And perhaps, in that, lies the last truth of what it means to be human. Even when, one day, it becomes nothing more than an unfamiliar ache. 

The ache of a mother’s embrace.