I remember when I was young I wasn’t much into art at all. I liked style, quality, the history of things, but art was too vague. At the time I made it my pursuit to live life through knowledge, science, and functionality. It was my personal renaissance moment: I chose the progress of science. A good example of this was when at the age of seven I actively stepped out of my religion, after much deliberation with the church pastor.

Now in my late forties I seem to be coming full-circle on this - at least there are moments when I think: is there anything in life of real value other than art or what it represents?

Hopeless emptiness

I’m trained as an engineer to build things that produce stuff, or fix problems so that we can move on and do something else, produce more. After 40 years of focus on the rational and functional, I ask myself what is the purpose of all this? During those same 40 years we humans (the sensible half; the others need some more time as always) have reached the conclusion that more is no longer better, far from it. So what does matter? Indeed: art.

A deeper connection

Because art can raise meaningful emotions, memories and inspirations. Things that sit deep within us and there is no hiding from it (unless you undergo a temporal lobectomy and separate the primordial limbic region, where these three mentioned functions reside, from the neocortex region of your brain).

Art can depict struggles in life that we tend to undergo solo, for which there are no clear answer. It can make the undiscussable discussable. Ying Yang. Light and dark. Balance. Natural, organic forms. Artificial forms and designs. What is love? Through art we can experience life deeper within us and communicate it with others.

Old Mammalian brain

Is it a step back in evolutionary sense, to prefer emotional over intellectual development? I guess it is, literally. I mean look at the timeline of human and brain development. But sometimes you got to go back to the foundation and make sure that everything you do is strongly rooted there, to give it meaning and avoid the hopeless emptiness as mentioned in the film ‘Revolutionary Road’. Once I considered emotions and instinctual thoughts as foolish left-overs from an animalistic past. No more. I learned. Sometimes my intelligence can reason me into or out of any corner, any point of view, but my instinct tells me when I am fooling myself. The inner-voice.

From now on I’m going to cherish that old part of my brain just as much as much as the newer part. I am starting a period of Triumvirate-rule involving all centres that command my physical, emotional and intellectual health!

I conclude with a quote from a great writer below: