The Brain and Dating

I for one love the brain. To me, it is the most impressive organ in the body. Some may say the heart or the kidneys are equally impressive; not me.

The brain is interesting for varied reasons, but on the topic of dating, I think its interesting to think about how the brain processes information in the environment.

Deepak Chopra has written about the idea of the individual as the creator of the world rather than individuals living in a world that is pre-made. One example he cites to make one start *thinking* is the idea of roses and their color. What makes a rose red? Well a wavelength is emitted from the rose petal and the signal is picked up by our retina which has encoded this color as "red."

Taking "Dr." Chopra's thoughts further, does a bumble bee see a red rose? A bumble bee's vision is quite different from ours but it exists in the same space. Turns out they do not see red at all! They see UV light up to 700 nm. 800 nm is the wavelength for the color red. Poor bees. Red does not exist in their world. But then again, we can't see UV so who is really missing out?

But I digress. Point being, though I'm not sure I buy into the "we are the creators of our world both physical and mental" idea that "Dr." Chopra promotes, he raises and interesting point; namely, we are what we perceive.

Now here is the interesting thing about perception. For certain phenomenon it is hard to perceive things as much different than they are. Red is red to most people. But what about the the artist who through his or her craft has developed a different perception of colors such that red comes in many shades to them and that your red, is not their red. It gets more interesting when this is related to language... but I'm really digressing at this point.

Back to dating. So I've skipped the whole argument that the brain perceives things based on experience, but we'll take that as fact for now, b/c I don't have the will to construct such an argument based on actual evidence. So indulge me. If it is true that perception is based on experience of the world, then it should also be true that perceptions can be manipulated and changed.

It relates to the advice many women get - act confident and beautiful and the guy will see you as confident and beautiful. Its very easy to second guess oneself - e.g. how can I be confident and beautiful with this huge zit on my face?! (I ask myself this a lot)

But no worries. It is all about perception. Perceptions can be tinkered with. Thus why the Denzel Washington's of the world are married to women who would be called a lot less than "beautiful."

In any case, I took you through this complicated ass post just to say, perception is what you make of it. In the dating/mating game, you may not be the most beautiful girl available, but you can be the most alluring. An allure has a lot to do with perception...