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1. I spent a lot of time thinking about the development of the emotional life while in Italy. To place the issue in context, I have spent a good deal of my first 54 years learning how to understandand and interpret the facts and ideas of the world. There has been much beauty in the endeavor, and my quickness in learning and good memory has enabled me to put lots of things in a perspective that I can defend and explain. But a logocentric view of life only takes you so far. I think the primary appeal of the logocentric life to me is its measurability--i.e., I can actually mark the way I am "improving" in my knowledge mastery, etc (It also gives you the impression, sometimes falsely, that you really understand the world better than if you didn't have the knowledge). But ever since I took up tango in January, for example, or cooking in February, or immersing myself in all kinds of music in March, I became convinced that effective communication and understanding comes in other ways than through words. But since I am so much of a "measurability" guy, is there any way to learn to measure the emotions, or to look at the challenge of developing them in a way that would be compatible with my "measurability" approach to the world? One of the "books" I though I would plan to write would be called "Measuring the Heart," and in it I would challenge myself to come up with tests or exercises which would evidence the growth of emotional development.

Another book title I came up with was similar in nature: "Making Love Central." I think, actually, that a book so named is really one that our culture longs for today. We know the way that the drag of life forces us to live in certain ways, ways that tend to challenge the centrality of love in life. Nevertheless, we also know that we would be better people, and we would be happier with ourselves, if we learned to make love a central part of the way we acted toward all creatures.

Thus I mulled over at some length what a book entitled "Making Love Central," would look like. I would have to spend considerable time sorting through the recent brain research on the relationship of the brain to love (where is the love function centralized? How does it function? What happens if it is not there? Are there ways to kindle it?). Then, I would have to come up with a workable definition of love, before talking about the importance of self-love and the way that one can love others in one's daily activities. I am sure there are tons and tons of good quotations from sources religous and secular on what love is and how to live in love.

I think I was encouraged to think about love in Italy not because it is a Mediterranean culture which has celebrated love's centrality since at least the time of Ovid, but because I had space to think and feel. When we arrived in Spoleto on June 29, and I flung open the windows of our room, I looked out on a spacious garden, with hanging flowers, neatly mowed grass and well-placed lounge chairs. My heart leaped, as I felt I was in a broad place, a place free from the cloying restrictions of Rome and Florence, where the overmastering heat and crowded living conditions can tend to force one into limited living.

2. But, in speaking about the brain and its relationship to love, I thought also that I will need to spend a lot of time in the future focusing on understanding the brain. I predict in the next 20 years that the number of learning disabilities or inabilities or other kinds of personal debilities will be traced to some kind of misfiring of something in the brain. And, if it can be shown that the reason that certain things don't come to pass is because the brain is "programmed" not to do them, is there a way of reversing this programming so that more worthwhile and satisfying living can take place? Let me illustrate what I mean by two quick examples. We all know people who lack motivation. I never could understand (and found it hard to sympathize with) some of my students of clearly superior intellect who just wouldn't want to expend the effort to perform well. I thought at times that if I only presented material in a clearer, more exciting fashion, that the students would "come alive" and likewise be "turned on" by my material. But sometimes it just didn't work. What if we discover in another 20 years or less that there really is a synapse or "gene" which motivates people, and that people without this characteristic simply will be slugs? For years we have evaluated people with lack of motivation from a moral perspective (even my word "slug" does that, of course). But, if we can trace a lack of motivation to a deficiency of some sort in the brain, well, maybe we can develop an array of medications or other sources so that a person can regain/gain this all-important characteristic.

Let's take something even more painful in life--an apparent incapacity to love. I have often felt that this was my signal deficiency. I have no trouble gaining friends, understanding people, showing sympathy or generally having a good and meaningful time in people's presence, but I find it very difficult to love people or, more precisely, to love a woman in a special way. What is the reason for that? I am sure that a shrink will tell me (because he has) that I possibly didn't have as much paternal affection as I needed as a child, but that really is neither here nor there. What can you do about it? What if we discover in the future that the ability to love is somehow related to the "size" or existence of something in the brain, and if this something is left out or is curtailed, then there really is nothing that can be done--short of developing some kind of "love-potion" medication. These are only two ways in which people may experience crushing deficiencies that may be "brain" and not "will"-related.

3. Finally, however, I received the gift of music repeatedly in Italy, music which was played and sung with such a longing for perfection or heaven that I felt I was almost there, too. What made the music so powerful was often its unexpected quality. What can I mean, since most of the music we heard was through planned concerts? On three occasions, we just happened to "walk in on" music that was playing, and it lifted spirits in quite incredible ways. One example was in the 8th century church of San Pietro in Valle, about 10 miles from Spoleto. I knew that this church and monastery was one of the oldest in the area, going back to Lombard times. We fortunately found it even though one of the roads to it was blocked off. As we entered into the apparently deserted small church, I heard the singing of a choir, but could see no one. The sounds filled every inch of that coved-ceiling church, and seemed to meld in a harmonic richness that defied description. But still, I saw no one. Then, as I walked further in the church I saw that there was a choir of 20-somethings almost hidden in one of the transept-like pockets off to the side of the main altar, preparing a song for a wedding. I sat down and listened to them, thinking that very few American spaces have the acoustical richness as these 1000+ year-old churches. It lifted me from the physical realities of my time and space and propelled me to think of the times when hearts soared, hopes blazed and life "fit." And, I thought, this little gift of music would stay with me a good long time. And it still does.

1955