This rarely scratch the surface of the topic, but I feel like talking about it.
PFC
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is unique to primates, and we humans have a bigger portion of it than any other species in the world. It was one of the last regions that appeared during evolution.
It does complex cognitive functions and projects to all sort of brain areas and regulates tons of our behaviors, decision making, impulse control, gratification delay, social behavior moderation; it helps you save your money, makes you do your taxes… the list goes on. Robert Sapolsky describes the essence of its function:
It makes you do the right thing when it’s the harder thing to do.
Like it or not
To me the PFC is our CPU, or in a less fancy image, a calculator.
It plans, calculate, and pushes us towards the right thing, the better outcome. And it can be ruthlessly logical, and pushes us wether we like it or not.
If your PFC thinks losing weight is the right thing to do, it’s gonna push you to the diet or exercise whether you like it or not, and that sometimes can be a great source of suffering.
The purpose and practice
I wonder if our purpose is to do the right things, as the commander, the central processing unit seems to be built around that task, and it feels so good when we manage to do it.
We have an entire reward system built around reinforcing it - so powerful that when steered the wrong way, it’s hugely catastrophic (addiction, self abuse, depression).
The beauty is we can train ourselves to be better at it. And it’s so crucial to not lie, to be honest in searching the right thing. Because sometimes I don’t know whether it is the right thing, which path is the right path. In those moments is vitally important to say I don’t know, but we’ll try and find out.
Another thing is, we might have gotten the order wrong. Maybe for a few lucky folks, they find out their purpose and they keep working at it and are all happy and cheery and fulfilled. For most of us (at least me), it’s a long, wandering journey to search for things that register as “feeling good” and “I don’t want to stop doing this”, and isn’t addictive and totally destructive.
Some people believe it’s the other way around, we keep working and getting better at it, then the thing becomes our purpose, or purpose emerge from the work. My experience is closer to this side of the theory.
It’s okay if we don’t know at the moment what we are meant to do, what is THE thing, THE purpose, It’ll emerge as we keep at our work - even it looks dull and pale and bores me to sleep right now, keep at it, one day it’ll sparkle, it’ll become something I jump out of bed expecting to have fun with, like Barbara McClintock.
And the universe is usually fair in that, the harder you work for the change, the longer you get to keep it.