فصل 06

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6

Back on campus, I didn’t miss the monkeys. Life felt rich and full, and over the next two years I kept at it, seeking a deeper understanding of a life of the mind. I studied literature and philosophy to understand what makes life meaningful, studied neuroscience and worked in an fMRI lab to understand how the brain could give rise to an organism capable of finding meaning in the world, and enriched my relationships with a circle of dear friends through various escapades. We raided the school cafeteria dressed as Mongols; created a full fake fraternity, complete with fake rush-week events, in our co-op house; posed in front of the gates at Buckingham Palace in a gorilla suit; broke into Memorial Church at midnight to lie on our backs and listen to our voices echo in the apse; and so on. (Then I learned that Virginia Woolf once boarded a battleship dressed as Abyssinian royalty, and, duly chastened, stopped boasting about our trivial pranks.)

Senior year, in one of my last neuroscience classes, on neuroscience and ethics, we visited a home for people who had suffered severe brain injuries. We walked into the main reception area and were greeted by a disconsolate wailing. Our guide, a friendly thirty-something woman, introduced herself to the group, but my eyes hunted for the source of the noise. Behind the reception counter was a large-screen television showing a soap opera, on mute. A blue-eyed brunette with well-coiffed hair, her head shaking slightly with emotion, filled the screen as she pleaded with someone off camera; zoom out, and there was her strong-jawed, undoubtedly gravel-voiced lover; they embraced passionately. The wailing rose in pitch. I stepped closer to peer over the counter, and there, on a blue mat in front of the television, in a plain flower-print dress, was a young woman, maybe twenty, her hands balled into fists pressed into her eyes, violently rocking back and forth, wailing and wailing. As she rocked, I caught glimpses of the back of her head, where her hair had worn away, leaving a large, pale patch of skin.

I stepped back to join the group, which was leaving to tour the facility. Talking with the guide, I learned that many of the residents had nearly drowned as young children. Looking around, I noticed there were no other visitors besides us. Was that common? I asked.

At first, the guide explained, a family will visit constantly, daily or even twice a day. Then maybe every other day. Then just weekends. After months or years, the visits taper off, until it’s just, say, birthdays and Christmas. Eventually, most families move away, as far as they can get.

“I don’t blame them,” she said. “It’s hard caring for these kids.”

A fury churned in me. Hard? Of course it was hard, but how could parents abandon these kids? In one room, the patients lay on cots, mostly still, arranged in neat rows like soldiers in a barracks. I walked down a row until I made eye contact with one of them. She was in her late teens, with dark, tangled hair. I paused and tried smiling at her, showing her I cared. I picked up one of her hands; it was limp. But she gurgled and, looking right at me, smiled.

“I think she’s smiling,” I said to the attendant.

“Could be,” she said. “It can be hard to tell sometimes.”

But I was sure of it. She was smiling.

When we got back to campus, I was the last one left in the room with the professor. “So, what’d you think?” he asked.

I vented openly about how I couldn’t believe that parents had abandoned these poor kids, and how one of them had even smiled at me.

The professor was a mentor, someone who thought deeply about how science and morality intersected. I expected him to agree with me.

“Yeah,” he said. “Good. Good for you. But sometimes, you know, I think it’s better if they die.”

I grabbed my bag and left.

She had been smiling, hadn’t she?

Only later would I realize that our trip had added a new dimension to my understanding of the fact that brains give rise to our ability to form relationships and make life meaningful. Sometimes, they break.

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