The mind is an amazing gift. For one thing, only living things are able to enjoy this experience. For another, using our minds we are also able to reflect on its gift. Indeed, it is a precious gift.

This is why I don’t feel like any experience is ever squandered. Moments are precious gifts of the result of so many dancing chemical processes.

Once, walking in the University of Utah’s library courtyard, my friend asked me what the purpose of my philosophy degree was. After all, I was also studying biology, and wouldn’t studying two “different” subjects just make my studies more difficult? Indeed, I was in a varied array of classes; my homework ranged from counting and dissecting octopuses to writing about intellectual property law. But I don’t think that this broadness made my life more difficult. I rather liked finding the common narrows in these assignments. But now, having finished a degree in Cognitive Science, I’ve realized something: our studies are interlinked in even more unexplored ways. I propose to you that ballet and DNA have more in common with our experience than simple statistics. For the function of both is chemical, and the chemistry is the chaos springing from basic rules. This emergence is prevalent in nature.