Left Side-Right Side

To the out­side world, I am def­i­nitely a left-brain per­son. Doc­tor­ate in the­o­ret­i­cal sci­ences, the­o­ret­i­cal sci­ences, many years pub­lish­ing aca­d­e­mic papers on obscure top­ics that only a few peo­ple in the world even care about. Although, greatly sur­prised that cita­tions con­tinue even today. The audi­ence was lim­ited enough when the pub­li­ca­tions were fresh. Surely they are beyond dated and stale now! Found this some­how incom­plete, thus sought more real­ity than the ivy-covered world. Found suc­cess in the great cor­po­rate indus­trial com­plex where ENTJ per­son­al­i­ties (The Exec­u­tive in Myers-Briggs per­son­al­ity typ­ing) often thrive. The tests always say I am an ENTJ. ENTJs lives are exter­nally focused. ENTJs deal with life ratio­nally and log­i­cally. My left brain sees pat­terns in num­bers, words, lines, shapes. It sees incon­sis­ten­cies in logic often quicker than almost any­one else in the room. To the out­side world I must be just a walk­ing computer.

But inside there is a right brain hid­den from the world that has always strug­gled with the exter­nal pres­ence. Inside my thoughts are simul­ta­ne­ously reach­ing out in every direc­tion. Inside there is pas­sion. Inside there is emo­tion. Inside just hear­ing a few notes of “Mis­erere mei, Deus” causes dis­tinct phys­i­cal plea­sure sep­a­rate from the ration and logic seen from the out­side. Inside there is judg­ment based on feel­ings that can almost never be expressed in words. Inside there is a strong desire to cre­ate visual imagery. I have to keep this largely hid­den from the world that pays my bills.

There is a rea­son I always sit on the side the con­fer­ence room with a view of the nat­ural world. I could not bear sit­ting through an eight-hour long design review if I could not occa­sion­ally look out­side and lose myself in nature’s beauty. Inside the room, where I have to end­lessly redi­rect a string of young engi­neers, sci­en­tists, and pro­gram man­agers, who con­tin­u­ously drift off in amaz­ing direc­tions that can only lead to group fail­ure. At time I feel I am ter­ror­iz­ing these poor young souls. It is not because I enjoy ter­ror­iz­ing them (no mat­ter what they say about me). It is sim­ply because no one else can sep­a­rate ask­ing hard ques­tions to guide peo­ple to think through com­plex prob­lems clearly from being afraid they might embar­rass the pre­sen­ter by a hard the ques­tion. I am well paid to force peo­ple to do a good job. What the world does not see is the stress this puts on me.

I have always not wanted to talk about this stress after I left the work­place. After many years I am begin­ning to realise this has been a mis­take. Being silent may seem to com­part­men­tal­ize the world of work from the work of my life with Still Here Too. But I am learn­ing that she feels the stress no mat­ter how much I think I may hide it. Over the years it has grown, it has added to the grow­ing bur­den of our health chal­lenges. It has con­tributed to the inter­fer­ence in our sex­ual rela­tion­ship that both of us absolutely do not want. The con­nec­tion we felt that night we met so many years ago is still there. I firmly believe it is because she can see the right side of my brain even though every­one else sees mostly the left side. Our con­nec­tion is emo­tional, pas­sion­ate, sex­ual. It is part of a whole that does not eas­ily fit into an ana­lyt­i­cal descrip­tion. All we have to do is remind our­selves that it is what mat­ters. Give it the time it deserves. Not let the rest of the world take time away from it. This con­nec­tion is what keeps us alive.

Is Still Here