Last week we switched the thermostat from “cool” to “heat.” Not because the equinox is behind us, not because the calendar says it’s almost October, but because the house was cold.

In Chicago, landlords must ensure habitable spaces are at least 68 degrees warm from September 15 till June 1, or “heat season.” If you’re chilly Sept 12, tough luck. Last I knew, the U.S. Army required soldiers to change between summer and winter uniforms on specified dates, weather be damned.

Individuals and cultures have different preferences between rigidity/order and flexibility/chaos. Some parents tuck toddlers into bed at eight, others when they act overtired and cranky. But an additional factor shapes whether turn-of-the-year shifts depend more on calendar or weather.

How close is the person who reaps the benefit to the one who bears the cost or risk? If you swap out summer for winter wear in your closet, no one else cares. On the other hand, the landlord who pays the heating bill may never have met the shivering tenant. The same question fits non-seasonal issues too, but that’s for another day.

Who doesn’t crave life balance? Enough to do and not too much, productivity and leisure, human touch and peaceful solitude? Able to walk the tightrope without falling off to either side? The equal balance of night and day at the autumn equinox conjures up this dream we pursue but rarely quite achieve.

A younger woman once asked me, with reference to work and family and volunteerism and the rest, if it’s possible to have it all. My response: Yes, but not all at the same time.

The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
     The garden is growing dark.
     The stars are shining.
     Let us, then, bow our heads to the earth's rhythms
     And acknowledge the wisdom of change.

Perhaps the lesson of the equinox is not to stay upright on the tightrope but to find ease with falling off. The time of equal day and night is very brief. Most days are longer or shorter. Joy and grief are warp and woof of life’s tapestry. “Let us, then, bow our heads to the earth’s rhythms and acknowledge the wisdom of change.”

Image: Five dancing women, 1338-1410, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, reproduced under Creative Commons licence CC-BY-NC 4.0. 

I woke in the middle of the night from one of those rare, profound dreams that answers a question that’s been pestering for weeks. Eager to save the solution, I found a pencil on the bedside table and scribbled key words on the back of a nearby Kleenex box.

“Aha!” moments of insight arrive seemingly out of the blue. A recent article in Communications Psychology defines such a moment as “a special type of problem-solving process where a problem-solver achieves a sudden and complete mental restructuring of a problem, accompanied by a distinct rush of satisfaction, surprise, and confidence.” Such epiphanies have changed the lives of religious mystics. According to legend, the ancient Greek thinker Archimedes got so excited by his realization about floating bodies that he jumped out of his bath and ran naked down the street, shouting “Eureka!” (“I have found it!”)

The morning after the dream, I forgot my eureka moment and went on about my day.

Psychologists suggest “Aha!” moments, if not supernatural, arise from subconscious brainwork based on previous experience, beliefs, and sensory input. They feel significant and true. To the extent they can be measured objectively, they are usually accurate or lead to positive results.

​Usually, but not always. Throwing away the empty Kleenex box months after the dream, I noticed my handwriting in pencil on the back. It said, “One apple is worth six bananas.”

Image: Anonymous 16th-century woodcut of Archimedes' eureka moment.

You may know this is the Year of the Dragon. Not attentive to the Chinese zodiac, I wasn’t aware of it until a couple of weeks ago. Now old memories surface. Savoring dragon imagery in North American Chinatowns. Playing Dungeons and Dragons with old-fashioned graph paper and pencil. Watching dragonflies hover above the pond, and dragon kites soar into the sky. Singing “Puff, the Magic Dragon” by the campfire. Reading tales of King Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon.

In general, a dragon (from Greek drakon and Latin draco, “large serpent”) is a giant, mythical reptile with long sharp claws and fangs, four legs, a long tail, often with wings and horns and fiery breath. Comprising all the traits of great predators built onto an enormous serpent, it was powerful enough to give protection (as in China and Wales), threaten enemies (as on the bow of Viking ships), or devastate the countryside until slain by Saint George or some other valiant hero.

The puzzle about dragons, to me, is why such similar scaled beasts took shape in so many disconnected parts of the globe—including places that don’t have crocodiles, iguanas, or traces of Tyrannosaurus Rex. There are theories but no consensus. One that intrigues me lies in the human genome. Although people of many lands faced more danger from bears than snakes, the opposite was true in Africa where their early ancestors evolved. Fear of snakes (and spiders, and heights) promoted survival. Like monkeys, humans are born with an instinctive fear of snakes. Small wonder such fear became the basis for fantastical super-predators around the world.

​Images (all cropped): (left) Aztec era stone sculpture of feathered serpent, National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City; (middle) Drawing from original gypsum bas-relief, from beside door in Babylonian temple, now in British Museum; (right) Carving on choir stalls in Chester Cathedral, England, 1380.

Age-old tradition treats reason and emotion as opposites. Whether in balance or in tension, they get paired with other dualisms: masculine and feminine, sun and moon, yang and yin, sophisticated and primitive, left brain and right brain. René Descartes famously wrote, “I think, therefore I am.” But if you only think, without also feeling, decisions are impossible. Logic may explain how to pursue a goal, but it can’t discern which goal to pursue. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio says, “It is emotion that allows you to mark things as good, bad, or indifferent.”

Damasio calls emotions an integrated set of rapid bodily changes that evolved for survival in response to danger or opportunity. In front of a charging tiger or truck, our bodies prepare to fight or flee. Our muscles tense, our pulse and blood pressure rise, our pupils dilate, our breath becomes rapid, all before our brains can formulate that we’re afraid. Later, as time allows, we can reason whether the danger is real or whether a reward is worth the risk.

“Life is not a series of calculus problems. Life is about movement,” New York Times columnist David Brooks writes. “Emotions guide the navigation system.” To teach children the alphabet but ignore story characters’ motives misses the boat. To estimate potential based on test scores alone is to overlook emotional judgment. To build a machine that processes data a zillion times faster than humans doesn’t mean it will replace us. To pit reason against feeling is self-defeating. We need both, working in tandem.

​Images: Symbols of reason and emotion.