In graduate school my PI had asked me to design some graphics for the lab and for some reason I decided to design a pair of matching logos. It was a sort of instinctual thing because I didn’t really want to draw something for the website. In retrospect, it was a bit grandiose of me to design it because logos are typically designed by the “boss.” Yet, my PI seemed to be the type to give her students more freedom than, say, a more authoritarian person in power. I think that’s why I enjoyed working with her so much. She was both very smart and very nice: a rare combo.
But anyways back to the logo. It was a sort of yin yang situation that was a Westernized version of an Asian concept. It was an interesting thing, it was just of a pair of brains overlayed over an MRI scanner with complementary colors for each pair. But from it, I can distill this idea of not being able to have everything in life in the sense that you can only use one of the two logos at a time. You can’t have it all all the time. I think there’s something really adult about that statement. People who want everything all the time have a sort of childlike presence to them. That childish charm in an adult may be seductive at first, but it’s really important to resist that temptation because the last person an adult would want as a spouse is a man child.
Yet, this concept of not being able to have everything and to be peace with it is something I’m working towards in my own life. One cannot have it all and life as an adult and functioning citizen of society means compromise. I think there are people in this world who don’t necessarily understand or are willing to accept that. Maybe a few of them are some of the ultra wealthy who are in the public eye at the moment.
The Ivory Tower 
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