The Sharpest Lives

I know a secret. Would you believe me if I told you?

There are two of you. Two of me. Two of all of us. You may be wondering, “Where? I don’t care about some clone on the other side of the world!” Well, the second you isn’t actually all that far away; that’s the point: it is you. There are two ponies living inside all of us. They are separate and independent, but oh Celestia do they love each other. They want each other and they interact with each other every single second of every single day. But like every loving couple, they have fights. Big fights. That’s where you come from.

No, wait! Don’t leave yet! Let me explain!

Have you ever gone into a store and wanted something you couldn’t afford? Like an outrageously priced first edition of Daring Do or something. The clerk behind the sales desk is turned around, cataloguing some sales records on his computer. You have more than enough time to grab the book and teleport away without being seen. What’s stopping you?

It’s called your conscience, the voice inside your head that speaks up whenever you’re doing something wrong. As much as you hate to admit it, that book has a high price tag for a reason. If you steal it from the clerk, you steal money from his family and his business. So instead of doing what would most benefit with you, you think about what’s best for others. There’s a better name for this than conscience: I prefer to call it your right brain.

You see, your brain is divided into two hemispheres, left and right. Your left brain is your ego center: it deals with analyzation, problem solving, and mathematics. It’s also very selfish. Your left brain lives in its own world, and cares only about itself. That makes it pretty unfriendly. In fact, it doesn’t even understand the concept of friends. If it got you a couple extra bits, your left brain would thoughtlessly kick its own mother into a mud puddle. Horrible, isn’t it? As smart as your left brain is, it wants nothing to do with other ponies. It would rather spend its days cooped up in a corner reading up on the newest advances in mechanical science than waste its time interacting with anyone else.

Your right brain is the pony grabbing it by the hoof, telling it to get up and dance.

And the dance is beautiful. Your right brain is the exact opposite of your left. It’s the part of you that wants to think the glass is half full. It’s the part of you that throws your umbrella away during a rainstorm because a little water never hurt anybody. It’s the part of you that wants nothing more than to make someone else smile. Your right brain is your memory center: it deals with empathy, energy, laughter... and love. It can’t function alone, and it wants nothing more than to please everyone else around it. So who better to pair itself with than your grumpy old left brain?

As you could guess, this makes for a pretty interesting relationship. While your left brain is annoyed by all of your right brain’s unnecessary enthusiasm, it has to admit that it envies its right counterpart a little. While your left brain is busy reading up on geological phenomena and continental drift, the right brain is walking in the door with a broken rockpick talking about how amazing the view from the mountaintop was. So it listens to your right brains stories, hoping one day it will understand why your right brain tells them. Why it cares so much about your arrogant, emotionless left brain.

The conflict between these two polar opposite personalities is actually quite dramatic. They fight for dominance whenever any situation arises, and you may not even know it. That’s where your conscience comes from. You aren’t one pony, you are the product of two ponies arguing with each other about what aspects of your personality are better to display. All of the victories and defeats of either side, all of the outcomes of every small preference and decision, make up who we are.

For someone who spent the past few years studying friendship and psychology like I did, you would think I knew that myself. You would think that I walked up to ponies doors and said “Hello! Do you have a few minutes of your day to learn about the ponies inside of you?” all the time. It’s not a complex concept. But that isn’t what happened. It couldn’t have been what happened, because I didn’t know what I know now. I didn’t know that I wasn’t just Twilight.

I didn’t know that I had two ponies living inside of me until I lost one of them.

~L~