The Everyday Problem That is the Left Hemisphere
The left hemisphere of your brain is a miserable little tyrant, a penny-ante dictator strutting around in the gray matter.
Don’t believe me? Look at the everyday modern life that the left hemisphere has given us. It’s one big prick-fest, a carnival of impatience and irritation where every glitch in the machine sets us off like a pack of rabid Chihuahuas. Sure, most folks don’t go around screaming at baristas. They’re “nice.” They hold doors, tip well, and post heart emojis on X.
But deep down, they instinctively think like pricks.
Let’s get real for a minute, you and me, like we’re sitting on a sagging porch with a bottle of cheap bourbon. Ever been stuck behind an old codger shuffling along at a glacier pace? Maybe you’re late for a flight, dodging through the airport like it’s the last chopper out of Saigon, and there’s this guy, all tremors and orthopedic shoes, clogging up the works. You feel it, don’t you? That little spike of annoyance, sharp as a tack in your shoe. Oh, you shove it down quick, scold yourself for being a jerk, but it was there, wasn’t it? A flicker of disgust, like catching a whiff of sour milk.
Or how about those motorized scooter brigades at the big-box stores, clogging the aisles like a parade of human landfills, too corpulent to traverse that Trail 1 Hike to the Doritos.
You’re telling me you’ve never felt a twinge of scorn at such things? If you say no, you’re either a liar or a saint, and I ain’t betting on the latter. The rest of us, we’re stuck with it—this left-hemispheric reflex that turns every inconvenience into a personal affront.
The left hemisphere is a bean-counter, a stopwatch-wielding bureaucrat obsessed with getting from Point A to Point B without any detours. It loves tasks, checklists, and the smug satisfaction of a job done fast. Efficiency is its god, and anything that gums up the gears—old folks, fatsos, the whole messy pageant of human frailty—is anathema. That old man in the crosswalk? He’s not just slowing you down; he’s a slow-gaited rebuke to the left hemisphere’s strong preference for a frictionless world. Your brain registers him as a bug in the system, and bugs need squashing.
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Eric Scheske
