Mind over Matter

My students and I are discussing ideas for short stories. Considering the fact that the majority of them are in their late teens, love is first on the list. I write “Romance” on the board, draw a heart next to it, and am instantly bombarded with questions.

Teacher, what is the meaning of that symbol?

It is a heart. You don't draw hearts like this in Rwanda?

Not. A heart is for pumping blood. That is what we study in biology.

Rwandans believe that love is in the mind, not in the heart, a point I tangentially contested for a good 10 minutes of class as I asked my students if they had ever been in love and whether or not they could feel it in their heart. Only a few of them said yes, but I feel like they might have done so to humor me. The rest were quite clear. Love is something you think about with your head, not feel with your blood-pumping organ. That is something else entirely.

This isn't the only physical or biological function that Rwandans and Americans seem to disagree about. Yawning is another. Every time I open my mouth to yawn, I am told to eat something. It doesn't matter if it is 6:00 in the morning or 10:00 at night or even if I have just eaten. If I am yawning, I am hungry. I assume that this is because food does, in fact, give you energy so it is possible that one can be tired from lack of food, but I'm constantly bemused by the fact that an involuntary bodily function can be perceived so differently in our two cultures. What is even more bizarre is that I have started to associate yawning with hunger myself, which has caused a sharp increase in the amount of snacking on amandazi (Rwandan fried bread) that occurs when I have to stay up grading papers.

Other times, my Rwandan friends are intrigued by some of the the simplest behaviors. Saying “Ow!” has no meaning, despite being my own ingrained response to pain. “Ah!” works perfectly well, but isn't something I react with naturally. I've also found that none of my cures for the hiccups work on my students, making me wonder if my students just like having the attention they get for having the hiccups or if they actually only work if you believe in them.

I gotta wonder, is culture the main determinant in how we understand the way we physically feel? If we say that love is in the mind, do we feel it in our heads instead of in our hearts? Is yawning really from hunger and Western culture has just been fooling itself all of these years? Or is it the other way around? If I grew up in a society that believed sneezing was a sign of the stomach flu, would it make me feel nauseous? At our core, we're all human and we all experience the same basic feelings, but it seems the power of the mind is strong enough to change the way we comprehend them.