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I have a habit of listening to podcasts while doing dishes and dinking about the kitchen. The majority of my podcasts are science and history. My mind wandered a bit during one and I began to think how incredibly wonderful my brain is. All our brains are wonderful, and I am absolutely fascinated by all of you. I literally do sit for hours just poking and prodding my friends' brains, traveling through and marveling at them. Astounding. I'm ever so grateful for the amazing diversity of terrain and content. I know my brain is so completely different from everyone else's and, because I'm used to her and live with her daily, I sometimes don't appreciate how amazing my own brain is. Well, this morning, I paused to appreciate her.
The thought began with history. I love it. The older, the better. What were the first two things I did when I found out we had a business meeting in Mexico City and that we would stay a few extra days to explore? I began to pour through guidebooks and historical Mexican books for the ancient culture and I started to teach myself basic Spanish. It's what I do when I find I'm going to any area. I simply am driven to know their history and how they came to be who they are. I stand in the middle of Downtown Anywhere, Earth and marvel with enthusiasm of a child how it all came to be. I am content to sit for hours and stare at a building, or an urn or an arrowhead and wonder what tales are locked into it. What has it seen? Who made it? What was going on in their lives while they made it? Was the person that created that pottery dish interrupted by their young daughter asking what they were doing? Maybe they set down the pottery as they made it to stop for some festival. Perhaps there was a solar eclipse while it was being made. Or maybe a loved one gave birth. Maybe the first blood an obsidian arrow-head saw was that of its maker as they accidentally cut themselves on a sliver. I want to know these things. I love thinking about them though I doubt I could ever know the true answers.
Then I wondered why, as I scrubbed a pan, my brain is like it is. I can trace it back to one word. One single life-long fascination that sparked my brain at the age of 3 or so. Dinosaurs. I blame dinosaurs. I couldn't get enough. I laugh when I think about it, too. Back in that day, dinosaurs were still slow, lumbering behemoths that had little intelligence and the sauropods couldn't even hold their weight unless they were ranging in bodies of water. I remember the exact moment that I even switched from just dinosaurs to prehistoric man. There was one doctor that my Mom saw who had a couple of big coffee table books that I couldn't put down. One was on dinosaurs and the other on prehistoric man. I hoped that doctor would keep my Mom in the examining room for two days so I could read every word. I think I may have been around five.
From there, it just snowballed. Egyptians, Minoans, Greeks, Etruscans... I couldn't stop. And all this ancient history lead me to become fascinated with biology, metallurgy, climatology, astronomy, medicine... all things physical science. It all flows together beautifully like some constantly changing phantasmagoric kaleidoscope. It's beautiful and fascinating to me.
The other thing that makes me laugh now is how my pronunciation is still a bit skewed as a result of being so young and reading all these complex foreign words using phonetics. Every time I see a Greek name that I spent hours reading in my mind as a child, I have to mentally correct the pronunciation before I speak it. Socrates, Euripides, Demeter... the first time I heard them pronounced correctly I didn't recognize them. I guess when one is in first grade and hasn't ever heard them pronounced aloud and one has been reading them in one's head a certain way for years... well... *blush*
This is what I've been pondering this morning and early afternoon. Now you know the foundation of why my brain is the way it is. It's all logic, reason, order and emotional reasons for why things are the way they are and where they came from originally. Thank you, Brain. I love you.
The thought began with history. I love it. The older, the better. What were the first two things I did when I found out we had a business meeting in Mexico City and that we would stay a few extra days to explore? I began to pour through guidebooks and historical Mexican books for the ancient culture and I started to teach myself basic Spanish. It's what I do when I find I'm going to any area. I simply am driven to know their history and how they came to be who they are. I stand in the middle of Downtown Anywhere, Earth and marvel with enthusiasm of a child how it all came to be. I am content to sit for hours and stare at a building, or an urn or an arrowhead and wonder what tales are locked into it. What has it seen? Who made it? What was going on in their lives while they made it? Was the person that created that pottery dish interrupted by their young daughter asking what they were doing? Maybe they set down the pottery as they made it to stop for some festival. Perhaps there was a solar eclipse while it was being made. Or maybe a loved one gave birth. Maybe the first blood an obsidian arrow-head saw was that of its maker as they accidentally cut themselves on a sliver. I want to know these things. I love thinking about them though I doubt I could ever know the true answers.
Then I wondered why, as I scrubbed a pan, my brain is like it is. I can trace it back to one word. One single life-long fascination that sparked my brain at the age of 3 or so. Dinosaurs. I blame dinosaurs. I couldn't get enough. I laugh when I think about it, too. Back in that day, dinosaurs were still slow, lumbering behemoths that had little intelligence and the sauropods couldn't even hold their weight unless they were ranging in bodies of water. I remember the exact moment that I even switched from just dinosaurs to prehistoric man. There was one doctor that my Mom saw who had a couple of big coffee table books that I couldn't put down. One was on dinosaurs and the other on prehistoric man. I hoped that doctor would keep my Mom in the examining room for two days so I could read every word. I think I may have been around five.
From there, it just snowballed. Egyptians, Minoans, Greeks, Etruscans... I couldn't stop. And all this ancient history lead me to become fascinated with biology, metallurgy, climatology, astronomy, medicine... all things physical science. It all flows together beautifully like some constantly changing phantasmagoric kaleidoscope. It's beautiful and fascinating to me.
The other thing that makes me laugh now is how my pronunciation is still a bit skewed as a result of being so young and reading all these complex foreign words using phonetics. Every time I see a Greek name that I spent hours reading in my mind as a child, I have to mentally correct the pronunciation before I speak it. Socrates, Euripides, Demeter... the first time I heard them pronounced correctly I didn't recognize them. I guess when one is in first grade and hasn't ever heard them pronounced aloud and one has been reading them in one's head a certain way for years... well... *blush*
This is what I've been pondering this morning and early afternoon. Now you know the foundation of why my brain is the way it is. It's all logic, reason, order and emotional reasons for why things are the way they are and where they came from originally. Thank you, Brain. I love you.
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