Do you know who Phineas Gage is (was)? I bet you do because when you type “Phin” into Google, he’s the second name that comes up (after Phineas and Ferb. obv.) I didn’t know who he was. Is that weird? Whatever I don’t care – I bet you can’t sing an augmented fourth. If you don’t know, he looked like this:
Long story short, dude had a pole go through his face and brain, lived, and maintained total brain function. Or so it seemed. All of his skills remained intact, but his personality changed drastically. This was the first real information scientists had on the function of the frontal lobe.
According to The Defining Decade (and the extensive researched it’s based off of) we humans have 2 main “brain growth spurts”. One when we’re babies/toddlers… and another in our twenties. When we’re little, our brain develops on overload of connections to prepare us to learn language, motor skills, etc. (and weeds out what it seems we’re not using). When we’re in our 20’s, our brain develops an overload of connections to prepare to learn our adult personality (again, weeding out what it seems we’re not using). It’s all about the frontal lobe, my friends. Basically, it’s like 10 years of freaking out – because we have all this potential – our brain prepares for anything and everything – we feel too much – and we have no idea where the hell to go. Read:
It’s inspiring and so terrifying. Our brains and bodies are physically prepping for us to take advantage of this time. Just don’t F*$@ it up! The good news is (oh wait, that was good news?) that it all calms down eventually. Our brains move towards reason and away from emotion. Negative moments literally ignite a more intense reaction in our 20-something brain than positive moments– but this changes later. It’s funny, now reading the post I wrote yesterday – no wonder I feel like “too much”. I felt it when I was little and I feel it now, because we’re all doing a lot apparently during these two eras.
Embrace it. Well, I’m gonna. All those grown-ups who say things like “I wish I had learned that language when I was little, it would have been so much easier…” WE GET TO DO THAT RIGHT NOW. But with our person. Who we want to be, how we want to feel and what we want to believe. The problem is knowing what it is we want, because once we figure it out our bodies and minds are prepped to get us there.
I find solace in taking it one decision at a time. I don’t know who I want to be when I grow up, if I’ll go to church every Sunday, who I want to marry, or if I’ll throw a lot of parties, but I think that I think that’s ok. Because I can make one decision at a time (usually). It’s all I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks. Do I feel like going to work? No. Should I? Yes. Sign up for that volleyball team or crawl under the covers? Sign up. Write that blog so everyone knows your beeswax, or keep it to yourself? Write it. All in the name of future-self. Because current-self is too hard. Who knows what’s going on with her.
If I find anything out on that one, I’ll keep ya posted.
- d
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