The Non-Facebook Post #53

I love how science and poetry can together explain away all that perplexes the human mind and ails the human heart. So, what I’m experiencing currently, all of my emotions at this time, are perfectly normal. They've been experienced by members of 170 societies worldwide, and for millennia. More than 95% of  anthropologist Helen Fisher’s interviewees in her TED talk The Brain in Love share what I have been through. She asked them two critical questions and the unanimous idea that came through was, “almost nobody gets out of love alive!” Yeah!

It’s reassuring to know that for once in my life I've not gone off the beaten track. Like everyone else on this planet, I've been through a rite of passage that “we all go through” as one of my favourite professors, Dr. Jay Gillette, told me. Currently, three areas of my brain are active and producing sensations that make for the tumultuous and obsessive time that marks this phase of a person’s life. 

So, the A10 cells of my brain’s Ventral Tegmental region are producing and spreading all this dopamine which has gotten me super-focused in the two months since this life-phase began. It’s the brain’s reward center that’s associated with energy and motivation and wanting, and sees heightened activity when you’re deeply in love and when you face rejection. That’s perfectly normal there then. Thanks VTA. Ever since you kicked in I've begun challenging myself to broaden my horizons and grow as a person. The second area of my brain that’s active right now is the Nucleus Accumbens, a region that calculates risks, gains and losses. This means that my brain has been doing all these computations about all that I risked and the result that followed. The third area of my brain that’s active and probably working in overdrive is associated with emotions of deep attachment.

Every time I find myself drowning in a sea of feelings, I know that the chemicals in my brain and my neurological processes are making me feel what I do. It helps! It’s not you, at least!

Helen Fisher also explains how romantic love is the biggest addiction out there - it's a drive more than a series of emotions - and how it displays all three characteristics of an addiction. There’s tolerance (wanting more), withdrawal and relapse. All of this apparently also makes you focus on the one you chose (through your selective proceptivity), crave, obsess, distort reality and take risks. Hey! All humans do this, and all animals practice Animal Favouritism – it’s normal!

And then there’s the glorious poetry that Fisher intersperses in her talk. The poets knew their science! I resonate with all the poets, especially Emily Dickinson - "parting is all we need to know of hell." Now, I wonder if some dramatic Bollywood kitsch will fit in here too to explain human mind’s perceptions of all that one encounters in a life lived.

‘Teri mehfil mein kismet aazma kar hum bhi dekhenge…

Kisike ishq mein duniya lutaa kar hum bhi dekhenge!’