[col-sect][column]Jonah Lehrer’s latest post describes his being so nervous and flustered when he first met the woman who would eventually be his wife that he forgot his phone number and in fact gave her the wrong number. Amusing. It happens. But then he said this:

I turned into a bumbling fool that afternoon because some peculiar part of my brain “knew,” long before I did, that she was unbelievably special.

Aww. A bit of light-hearted personal anecdotal quirkiness that at the same time is a nice compliment to his wife. Not completely unwelcome for a blog about neuroscience, and more to the point, a rare example of a guy pulling the soul mate card. I always enjoy the ridiculous leaps in logic made from some marginally coincidental circumstance to the conclusion that as a result of the coincidence that some person is therefore a soul mate. It was meant to be you see. What’s your typical example? I don’t know. Some form of  brilliant deductive reasoning such as “Ohmygod, (some guy) was (at some place) and therefore we’re soul mates.” And when you hear stuff like this you’re just left dumbfounded and blinking unable to really engage with the massive leap in logic from the random to the evidence of destiny. The soul mate momentum thing. Got a life of its own.[/column][column]

So, Lehrer’s little story is not to be taken seriously obviously because we’ve probably all gone through those embarrassingly awkward or nervous scenarios when in the first encounter presence of someone “special,” but we didn’t ALWAYS end up in happily eternal married bliss with that person. About ten years ago on my first few dates with this one gal I was always losing my balance and kept falling into things or falling off the sidewalk. Yeah it was bad. But sooner or later the chemicals return to balance and you can walk straight again and conduct yourself just fine in a functioning relationship. For four years. Sure I was infatuated at first, but how is that sensation not just Mother Nature’s little game to fill your head with chemicals to make you dizzy and stupid just when you want to be your sharpest. Awesome. But did my brain think she was unbelievably special long before I did? No, I knew she was pretty hot (yes, and refined and classy) when I first saw her. And my nervousness was directly related to that hotness and I guess an emotional investment in the outcome of my clumsy approach. I mentioned this was ten years ago, right? I didn’t mistake the flood of natural opiates in my head for some unclear message from my subconscious that required deciphering. “Oh, is it love? Is it infatuation? Oh I’m so confused. Is it destiny?” Give me a break.[/column][/col-sect]

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