Week fourteen

We are a strange race aren't we?  The way our minds work is so peculiar.  Staggering I would say - how we base our decisions and make the littlest things matter so much.  Why do we give ourselves so much grief?  I never quite understand why I am constantly battling with myself with every single little thing.  Its exhausting.

So to perhaps give myself a few answers and possibly some light relief, I thought I'd do something a little different and go to a lecture at The School of Life, a relatively new initiative that aims to give people good ideas and challenge us on our everyday concerns.  They offer all sorts of random classes, all created by leading academics, artists and authors on topics such as "how to have better conversations", "how to make a difference" and "how to fill The God-Shaped hole".  Gosh.

Based on my mind-boggling mind issues I was intrigued by a class called "on being yourselves".  The lecturer was David Eagleman, a prolific neuroscientist and psychiatrist whom has written several books.

My friend Cath and I arrived and were welcomed to sing a hymn, relevant to today's lecture; "True Colours" by Cyndi Lauper.  Well it was all very nice and warm and fuzzy but not really for me.  However, I have to say that being someone that always listens to the music as supposed to the lyrics of songs, I realised what a beautiful song it is.  The problem is, its message wasn't actually that relevant to the lecture that was to follow.

I think what I was expecting was something more about how we shouldn't be afraid to be who we are and maybe hints on how to manage the emotional battles we have with ourselves and to deal with the demons but in fact it was much more scientific.  Yeah, that may very well just be me being a bit too hopeful - Eagleman is after all a neuroscientist, but what followed was very analytical and almost didn't tell us what we didn't know.

Don't get me wrong - he was very engaging and funny and what he did say was very interesting.  He basically talked about our conscious and unconscious brains.  The fact that we have such limited access to so much of our brain and what that's all doing.  We all have 2 sides to us - that are conflicted and we constantly argue with ourselves and try and reason.  Emotion versus reason.  Cake or no cake.  I think emotion normally comes out on top for me.

Eagleman did bring up some thought-provoking questions about how we make deals with ourselves for example if someone offered us £100 now or £110 in a week which would we take?  The £100.  But, if someone offered us £100 in 52 weeks or £110 is 53 weeks we'd probably go for the £110.  The scenario is exactly the same but the former is in the now.  Things are attractive to us now.

Its all about binding our future behaviour and making contracts.  Just think about how we all make plans to give up smoking, loose weight, learn something new and we all give ourselves time frames and criteria in which to abide by.  As Eagleman puts it there is basically a political Parliament in our brains.

I'm just more confused.  Actually I'm not - everything he said made total sense but just made it abundantly clear that we really are all in constant battles with ourselves, regardless of what the issue is and how big or small it is.

A couple of little facts that Eagleman mentioned that I loved were that people called Dennis or Denise are more likely to become dentists, due to our implicit egotism.  Similarly, we are more likely to marry someone with the same first initial.  Right.  James? Joseph? Josh? Jack?

Eagleman took a few questions at the end, that I thought he could have been a bit more indulgent with but I suppose its hard to not get drawn into a one on one therapy session.

A giant devil was lurking throughout

It was definitely interesting and I wouldn't deter anyone from going to one of the lectures but I advise anyone to be well informed on all the subject matters.  There is a fantastic calendar of lectures on offer and you can peruse them all here.

This week I'm off to The Literary Salon at Shoreditch House.  Goodbye science.