A Tragedy of Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity is a term we use in the medical world, and in rehab in particular, which refers to the brain’s extraordinary ability to adapt to new realities. Our nervous system is capable of reorganizing its very structure and circuitry in response to experience and circumstance. It is an incredible function that advances our immediate and evolutionary good. It allows us to learn new things, recover from traumas both physical and emotional, and provide support for areas of the system that have lost function.
And yet.
It is a tragedy of neuroplasticity that we become accustomed to things we once found incredible.
My husband and I recently celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary. Sometimes I am overcome by the recognition that the life I currently live was once the stuff of my 16 year old self’s wildest dreams. It may hit me through a piece of music, or poetry, or a dream, or the flash of a memory. How is it that I wake up every morning in a reality that I once dreamed about, but there are no forest animals laying out my clothes or making my breakfast and no birdsong and shimmering light filling my senses?
Brad and I met in third grade. We fell in love in ninth grade. I have the mixed CDs and a collection of notes passed in the hallway to prove it. Our path from there to marriage had some fits and starts, but it really feels like this was always our destiny and I recognize that is unusual (and sappy). As teenagers full of all the requisite hormones and utter lack of life experience, the chance to spend all our days and nights together seemed like the height of what life had to offer us. Of course, being mostly formed adults, we now understand that everyday life is largely filled with banalities and chores and bills and childcare and work and the endless list of things that need to be dealt with. I’m grateful to be doing those things with Brad as my mate. He’s an excellent partner and we have enormous trust in the security of our foundation with one another. But our brains are no longer preoccupied by flirting and courting and wondering what the other is doing and staying up late texting about nothing.
I understand that neuroplasticity, that ability for us to accommodate to new realities, is what allows us to get anything at all accomplished in our daily life. But every now and then I access that teenage circuitry and bask in the dream that is my life. I hope I can always find that feeling when I need it most. I hope you can too.
