Nonfiction by Sheena Jiang
Art by Alex Hoang
I’ve often bemoaned how bizarre it is to lack (or more realistically, have a large deficit in) such an essential neuropsychological function. But, if I’m being honest, I rarely ever think about what I’m missing out on.
Biologically, executive function is not so necessary. That’s why it’s located in the frontal lobe, sequestered away from all the “lizard parts,” the truly “old as time” bits and bobs of the brain that allowed the first ancestors of humans with a developed central nervous system to make it from one day to the next. Yet, evolutionarily, executive function is the primary reason for human success. Goal-oriented behaviour—the ability to control one’s actions, to rely on something deeper than pure, genetically-encoded instinct, and to achieve things beyond the simple goals of fucking today, feeding tomorrow, not freezing yesterday—is what fundamentally makes us human.
As someone who has never felt the “glory” of a full-fledged frontal lobe, the whole notion seems unimaginable. In fact, for the first fourteen years of my life, I had genuinely no idea that people simply got up and did things because they wanted to, that having a goal was enough to move most from their current seats, or that it should not be nearly torturous (or even impossible) to think about anything for more than two minutes at a time. It feels almost as if I’m an outsider, with the wrong key to the filing cabinet that holds the secrets to the universe (but more importantly, the instructions to actually live the life I want).
Executive function, put simply, is the ability of the brain to control itself. As my untouched psychology midterm would tell you, it is the “cognitive control of behaviour.” To me, it is the ability to be one with yourself. To walk in lockstep with your self-concept, to say things that matter to you, to see the intersection between your future and now without having to astral project in some feverish sleep-deprivation-induced dream.
Yet, for me, there is a disconnect nestled somewhere deep in my frontal lobe. I can certainly tell myself to get up, to work, to do XYZ, but whether or not it actually happens feels entirely out of my grasp. My neurons can fire their stupid little action potentials all they want, but they’re yelling into empty space. Somewhere in the bajillion neural pathways making up the tissue of my brain, that signal gets pulled over and arrested on the highway. I doubt it ever makes it home. In the TED Talk of life, my audience sits vacant, with the empty space of a front row VIP seat reserved for “Sheena” staring menacingly back at me.
Executive dysfunction is much like a constant, apocalyptic, out-of-body experience. It is to watch yourself move through life with no say in what you do, to yell from some omniscient observing perspective until your throat has swollen shut, to remain unheard, and to numbly feel yourself get up and start the same empty day, over and over.
There’s this one “inspirational” quote, which I find somewhat sickening; it goes: “In a life where you only get one choice, why be anyone but yourself?”
But what happens if I don’t get to choose at all? What happens if I am not me?
I am not my choices. I am not my ambitions. I am not even my own brain.
So who the FUCK am I?