Yee 1 David Yee Ms.

Gardner Honors English 10 Period 0 16 January 2014 Sentimentality and Logic The human heart corresponds in size to the human fist. But not all of us believed it. It had to be bigger than that. I knew mine was. How else could it hold all my feelings, my passions, my desires, my dreams, my secrets? Ms. Gardner quoted, reading aloud yet another sentimental text. The writing itself reeked of romanticism and false information, both of which assaulted my senses like sulfur. Where did people get these ridiculous notions of the hearts capacity to feel life, love, and happiness, I questioned myself. The heart is a cardiovascular pump used to circulate the blood, and nothing more. Perhaps the idea would have been acceptable in the 12th century, but in this day and age such thinking is looked down upon. The heart can convey ideas in equal measure as ones lungs or appendix. The brain, on the other hand, commands ones thoughts, ideas, and life. Alcmaeon, an early Greek physician, wrote that the brain, not the heart, was the central organ of sensation and thought. Everything we see, everything we touch, everything we taste, can be directly linked to the brain. The brain gives us a sense of purpose in life; it allows us to question everything we know and do not know about ourselves, furthering our own education in the name of knowledge. When I was a young child, my entire world revolved around my brain. My academic superiority stemmed from my own burning curiosity and my need to question everything I ever encountered, no matter how mundane the thing at hand seemed. I would question everything:

Yee 2 why the sky shone blue, why the sun felt warm, why people could smell. I remember one time asking my parents what it felt like to be dead, to which they promptly responded with a single word: Nothing. This, of course, brought up an entirely new set of questions, but with them came one set ideato feel was to be alive. To smile from the laughter of a child, to agonize over the loss of a passed grandparent, to feel the force of a wave wash over the rocks, meant that I was alive. Even when emotions overran my rational thoughts I knew that I was alive. Silly childhood questions turned into practical inquiries as toy cars turned into video games, sweatshirts were exchanged for sweaters, and action figures were replaced by trading cards. A bobble head of Tim Lincecum substituted the Buzz Lightyear that rested on my shelf. My brain still was the star of my life, forcing me to strive academically, but school failed to challenge me extraneously. I thought that I had little less to question, so I preoccupied my brain with other hobbies such as chess and video games. Although seeming opposites, they both challenged my brain to think differently: Chessvibes wrote that chess exercised [my] prefrontal cortex while the American Psychological Association wrote that video games honed [my] cognitive skills. Having struggled emotionally after being bullied in elementary school, my brain wasnt quite ready for traumatic events, so when my friends father died, life continued. I didnt understand why everyone was so sad since I knew that death was natural, and I still wouldnt understand until years after. How can one know what emotional pain feels like after having become numbed for so long? Life became more and more cynical as the ideas of Hard Times by Charles Dickens worked their way into my life. Satirical concepts of life, love, and utilitarianism seemed correct,

Yee 3 and the public view of life, love, and utilitarianism were wrong. I understood that Dickens was mocking the views of education and marriage, but they finally seemed to make sensechildren were simply empty jars, waiting to be filled with Facts. One distinct conversation comes to mind when talking about Dickens. My mother and I were driving to Boy Scouts, when I asked her why people have children. People have children because they want to create, Dear, she replied. But why burden society with extra people? It seems selfish that someone would want to create a child, thereby replacing someone else in the workforce. All the child would do for the first eighteen years would be expend resources, I pointed out, smirking as I did so. This cynical and rebellious view was partly due to hormones, but to myself it seemed like an act of rebellion against what I thought my father always taught: academics always came first for him, and never my emotional well being. I tried to prove that I could be cold and detached from society, but I later learned that by doing so I was foolishly separating myself from the rest of my family. This newfound revelation was a hard lesson to learn, but through the process of learning I became accepted as a human being once more and not a logical, utilitarian automaton. Time went on, and as I matured so did my brain. I threw myself into the world of international concerns, and I realized how insignificant my problems were compared to someones in Syria. I finally seemed to understand and appreciate the morals behind each story that I was told as a child, each lesson my father tried to teach me, and each selfless act performed on my behalf; I even started to question as I did when I was younger. As I started to appreciate the sentimentality of stories, I also began to understand the meaning of phrases such as heartfelt. I even began to accept the childish stories that riddled my childhood, realizing that

Yee 4 creativity and imagination were just as important as logic and reason. With this newfound wisdom, I set myself on a course to eventually change everything about the world, starting with my own brain. One day, though, it seemed like I had acquired so much wisdom that it felt like my brain was about to burst. I was coming home from Yosemite, when all of a sudden I felt a sharp pop behind my eye. A sharp pop turned into excruciating pain in a matter of seconds, leaving me crippled in the backseat clutching my eye as my father sped as quickly and carefully as he could down one of the steepest roads near the national park. It felt like a red-hot ice spike was being driven through my head, reducing me to a pitiful ball that was barely containing a scream of pain. After five agonizing minutes, the pain lowered to a sharp throb, and my father drove home with a ghost of a person in the backseat. However, I still felt, which meant that I was still very much alive. If I had stopped feeling all of the pain, then I wouldnt be where I stand today. Feeling is what makes us, as human beings, alive. To touch, to feel, to sense, all make us who we are. Ignored for years, the brain has finally achieved its recognition of being the central organ to any human, but it has developed to become much more than that. If I were to read that the brain is an organ of soft nervous tissue contained in the skull of vertebrates, functioning as the coordinating center of sensation and intellectual and nervous activity, I would say that that definition is wrong. It is the means by which we convey our ideas not only intellectually or sensationally, but on a whole new emotional level. The brain channels everything about usour thoughts, ideas, and epiphaniesand manifests those ideas into a form that we can understand. In a way, the brain is the pathway to the unknown, and the first rationale step in the true purpose of a human being. To question, to search, to explore, the brain is more than just an organits the future.

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Works Cited

"'10 Big Brain Benefits of Playing Chess'" '10 Big Brain Benefits of Playing Chess' | ChessVibes. Chess Vibes, 2 Apr. 2012. Web. 20 Jan. 2014. "Brain." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 22 Jan. 2014. Granic, Isabela. "Video Games Play May Provide Learning, Health, Social Benefits, Review Finds." Http://www.apa.org. American Psychological Association, 25 Nov. 2013. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. "History of the Brain." PBS. PBS, 2001. Web. 21 Jan. 2014. Page, Norman, and Charles Dickens. Hard times by Charles Dickens. London: Macmillan, 1985. Print.