The Greatest Creation
By Joe Rector
The human brain fascinates me. It is, by far, the best computer ever made. Some technological folks might cite at least a half dozen reasons that prove my statement incorrect. Changing their minds is impossible, so I’ll leave them to their incorrect beliefs. The good Lord made something far superior to all of mankind’s inventions. It is from that brain that all other things first come to being.
It’s from our brains that we learn all things. Our ability to go from sitting up to crawling to walking starts in that control center. How amazing it is to watch a little one understand what is necessary to walk from mom to dad. That complex act that we take for granted is a miracle of millions of things inside us working together to complete.
Even more spectacular is watching a child learn to speak. His brain takes cues from his parents’ speech and coaxing; his mind must understand the relationship between an object or an individual and the identifying word. As he grows, his brain allows him to put words together to form sentences that express his needs or his thoughts.
The brain develops information that tells a person how to act in different settings. Our master control panels feed us thoughts on how to be teenagers, what is “cool” for the teen years, and what are appropriate interactions with all people with whom we make contact. The brain helps us decide who our friends will be, what activities we will enjoy, and even in what subjects we will excel in school.
The brain controls our moods. In some way, this miracle machine takes in information and actions, analyzes them and then relays to us the proper mood for the situation. Too often, my mind makes analyses that lead to my mood being a sour one or a sad one. Only re-analyzing the same information can lead to a completely different mood, one that is much more pleasant to us and those who share space.
Most fascinating of all is the brain’s ability to help us remember things from our past. I’m well into senior citizenry now, but through the wonderful workings of the brain, recalling many events from childhood is easy. My mind can whisk me back to high school and a special date, or it can help me remember playing Davy Crocket with my twin brother. We wore leather jackets with tassels down the arms. Wiping a runny nose on the sleeve left a shiny trail on it. In a flash, my mind goes to the day I jammed a piece of broken glass into my foot while our family visited grandparents who lived in Lonsdale.
I do have to admit that our brains have limited warranties. While I can remember what I did as a 5-year-old in 1957, I stand and look with a blank expression as I try to remember why I walked into my office. I spent a career learning thousands of students’ names, but now I struggle to pull out the name of someone at church. If a list of “to-do” items contains more than three things, I have to write it down; otherwise, at least one of them will be forgotten.
The human brain is the most marvelous thing ever created. Its powers are limited only by the owner. It’s sad that so many people choose to turn their brains off and blindly follow the thoughts of others. Those who fail to use their minds have decided that “ignorance is bliss.” I, for one, don’t believe that for a second.
