It occurred to me today that there are Spocks and there are Kirks, and I’m a Spock.

Of course, if you haven’t watched the original episodes of the Star Trek television show, circa 1966-1969, or the original movies (Star Trek 1 through Star Trek 6), then you might not have any idea what I’m talking about. So, let me catch you up as quickly as possible.

The captain of the Starship Enterprise was one James Tiberius Kirk, played by William Shatner in the original series (TOS). His right hand man was Commander Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy. These two, and their interactions with each other, were illustrative to the extent that Captain Kirk was regularly a passionate leader, emotional, sometimes prone to hysterics. Commander Spock, on the other hand, was logical, intellectual, and reasoned in his responses. To watch the two of them, working together to solve problems and to “save the day” in the short one-hour time frame that they had, you often got to see the importance of looking at problems from different points of view.

The relationship between Kirk and Spock was a little more complicated than that, especially when you consider that Spock was half-Vulcan. The Vulcans were an alien race, dedicated to logic and reason and self-discipline, and that Spock’s mother was a human…

But, I don’t really need to go into that.

As often as it was the case that Kirk’s human emotions were chastised by Spock as “illogical”, they were what made Kirk’s character endearing. Kirk was a great leader because of the compassion that he had for those in need of assistance and rescue. Spock was often cold and methodical, incapable of understanding why emotional empathy would ever be of value.

Needless to say, the two of these characters, together, encapsulated the totality of the human mental experience –> emotion and passion fighting with reason and logic to try to equate to an integrated thought process that would have appealed to Goldilocks; not too cold and aloof, but not too emotionally charged and impassioned, but rather, just right.

And so, all of that is to say that all people tend to fall somewhere on this spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, you have people who are ruled by logic and reason and intellect, while on the other end you have people who are ruled by passion and emotion and feelings. Of course, as I am a fan of the middle ground as much as possible, we should (I suppose) be striving for a measured combination of the two approaches. I struggle against my inner Spock to try to be a little bit more Kirk.

However, I just can’t abide by people who seem to be emotional all the time. The highs and lows of life are just so numerous and the roller coaster that would ride each of those highs and each of those lows is a ride on which I would prefer not to be a passenger.

I saw a meme the other day that had a picture of a heartbeat (you know, the little jagged heartbeat reading on the otherwise flat-line readout) and the meme said, “If your life doesn’t have ups and downs, then you’re dead”. While the meme is intended as a play on the imagery of the heartbeat reading, the deeper meaning is somewhat alarming. To a certain extent, I suppose I agree with the meme. However, I have known people who voluntarily –subconsciously, but voluntarily– decide that they are going to ride every high and every low that there is to ride, to get excited about things of no consequence and to get upset about things of equally little consequence.

It has always seemed to me, maybe because of my upbringing, maybe because of my preference for logic, maybe because I have always thought that Spock was cooler than Kirk, that such emotional roller coaster rides are pointless and –dare I say– extremist. But, I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the other extreme to be avoided here. You can’t go through your whole life being cold and aloof and disconnected from the relationships with the people around you, the people around you that matter the most. As easy as it would be to not get our hands dirty with the emotions and feelings of the people in our lives, we have to embrace that as part of the human experience. People have feelings, and those feelings have a legitimacy because the people who are feeling them have legitimacy.

Spock without Kirk is just as bad as Kirk without Spock.

P.S. I am just now realizing that this post is set to drop on May the 4th. It makes me laugh out loud to think that I have inadvertently stepped on Star Wars day with this Star Trek post. A true sci-fi fan appreciates both of these wonderful worlds of sci-fi fun. May the 4th be with you.