“The Brain”, cultivating empathy and letting go of control

What neuroscience taught me about myself and others

I think a side effect of being a twenty-something-year-old in this generation is never being fully convinced of your life choices. In a way, I am grateful to be born in an era with so many opportunities - where my only use to society is not just procreating and caring for the home. Even though, these are in fact roles I wish to fill one day. 

But I’ve wanted to be so many different women all at once. Last summer, I decided I’d live my life by the sea and learn how to surf (thanks, Mom. For advising me to book an intro class before making that my entire personality and spending tonnes of money I didn’t have into new equipment). 

About a month ago, I ventured into the field of neuroscience. Triggered by a late-night binge of Grey’s Anatomy while my partner was out of town, and I don’t say this proudly - it quickly turned into my newest obsession. Although my desire to spend another four years at university to become a neuroscientist has worn off, I’ve actually been fascinated by all things neurons and synapses.

A few chapters into a neuroscience-for-the-curious book called “The Brain” by David Eagleman, he writes: “You don’t perceive objects as they are, you perceive them as you are”.  I have not stopped thinking about this quote because it changed the way I listen to and look at people. 

Knowing that our beliefs, our morals, our political ideologies, and the philosophies by which we lead our lives and raise our children are intrinsically connected to our memories, to our own private experiences of the world - helped me look at people with more humanity, even the ones holding opinions which I most condemn. 

This gave me a chance to look within and dig deeper, only to find the ugly truth about my thought patterns. Often, I’ve been the person who dreads group work, who gets a kick out of cooking and cleaning alone because I believe no one else could do it right. I tend to hold others to the same high standards that I hold myself. But learning about the cognitive processes that lead us to do things in the way we do them, to be the people we are, it was like a lightbulb went off in my head.

I know that my aversion to group work stems from a need for control, and that my perfectionism when it comes to cleaning is just a way to cope with my anxiety. All the same, I don’t want to be interested in people and their experiences of life so that I can criticise them, but to listen and learn something. Having completely different experiences of the world should be exhilarating.

“When we practice new skills, they become physically hardwired, sinking below the level of consciousness. Practised skills become written into the microstructure of the brain.”

I want to love people so hard it becomes effortless, I want to extend them grace so often that it is just second nature. I want to be hardwired for compassion. Not because they deserve it, but because it is needed. We see so much of what is rotten that virtue has no chance to enter our field of vision. It is a choice. It takes discipline to be positive, to chase the light in others. 

I’ve known for a long time that I can offer a radically intimate love through language. Literature, besides the many other ways in which it has saved me, has also given me the structure and the vocabulary to offer my most honest tenderness.

The real challenge for me is to be patient with their limitations, to make service a daily habit, and not to run at the first sight of danger. To find beauty in this truth: “Each creature perceives only what it has evolved to perceive”. We are still growing.

Maybe I’m nowhere closer to figuring out what I want to do with my career, but I’m certain of how I want to live with others, and I’m excited to keep exploring the depths of my psyche.