The Right-brainer's Lament and the Importance of Art

I mentally walked through the National Gallery of Art this morning and I looked at my favorite paintings: the hunk of butter, the lady reclining on the pillows, the boy (who looks like a girl) with the broom, Van Gogh's portrait, the Da Vinci painting, and the one of that guy falling off the boat into the ocean with the shark. As I looked at them, I thought, "I really hate being right-brained. I'm hardwired for art and literature and mismatched colored socks. I'm hardwired for this (mentally gestures to the paintings on the walls) and not any of the important things that the world values - like science and math skills.

Where some people receive math problems and easily smooth them out as if they were wrinkles on a tablecloth, I receive math problems that are snarls and that grow worse and more tangled with every effort I put into solving them. Some people can clearly "see" math and logic problems. There's a big spotlight shining down on them and they deftly grasp how to work and solve them. I receive math and logic problems and I see words, words that take difficult minutes and seconds to state and restate and write down and draw diagrams for and solve (don't get on my case about my ridiculous use of "and"s. I decided a long time ago that I was going to stop caring about commas so much.) I can't do what they can do, but I can use art.

I can draw things that are real and things that aren't real. I can mash colors together on a canvas until they resemble something. I can decorate and design. I can make things pretty. But the world doesn't care about pretty. The world cares about science and industry and math - and rightly so; those are the more important things. I learned in Art History (thank you, Mrs. Russell!) that it wasn't until after civilization attended to the things that were more important (food, shelter etc.,) that it was able to really focus on other things like art.

But I think art is still important (no, I don't care that I started a sentence with "but"). Science and math and industry improve our quality of life and expand the boundaries of the world we live in, but is it enough to just live? To just exist? To work in steel buildings and drive our expensive cars and eat our casseroles and watch our TV and go to sleep and do it all again the next morning? No. There's more. And art allows people to show that "more." People have ideas, passions, feelings, a kaleidoscope within them that art - dance, painting, pottery, jewelry, architecture, embroidery, anything - unleashes. No, the artist might never be as highly valued as the scientist or the engineer, but that's okay.

As I mentally leave the National Gallery of Art and step back into my own world where there are chemistry problems to learn and metabolic processes to memorize, I realize that I'm actually happy to be right-brained. No, school isn't easier, but the world outside of it is a whole lot more colorful.