We can file this under “odd things to think about.” But someone has to think about them and who better than me, right? Here’s my latest thought.
But before I share it with you, let me preface this by saying I’m living in a bit of a fog lately. I believe the clinical term for it is “stress”. Its tax season. We’re in the middle of moving to a new city, and I’m traveling quite a bit for business. Some days I don’t know if I’m coming or going.
Those observing me may think I am losing my mind. In fact my brain did this a little trance flash the other day as I was driving down the highway. You know what I am talking about. You’re driving, listening to the radio, deep in thought and suddenly you look at where you are on the highway and simultaneously you can’t remember quite how you got there, or even if you passed your exit. All thoughts collide into one and seriously, if I didn’t know about highway hypnosis I could have sworn I was about to lose my mind.
When I was about six or seven years old I frequently worried about losing my mind. The onset of this fear fell on the heels of witnessing my beloved Granny one day going through the house obviously looking for something and mumbling that she was losing her mind. Her brows furrowed and her lips pursed, she looked very distraught. Losing one’s mind, I concluded, must be extremely serious.
Soon after she got in the car and drove off ,presumably, to the last place she had been to see if she could find the missing grey matter. Or that is how my six year old mind processed what I was witnessing.
I began to ponder her dilemma. Your mind must be very important if Granny had to leave to find it. There had to be some urgency to recover it. If it was gone from your head too long you wouldn’t be able to find it, because there would be no way to think about where you might of lost it. In a bit of comical cosmic orchestration it seemed a long time before I saw Granny again, and I was really worried. I worked my brain into a tizzy over these sordid thoughts.
The study of the brain, the mind/body connection has me revisiting the question of what happens when you lose your mind.
Do the new studies in neuroplasticity imply that if you were to lose your mind you could create a new one?
As I said. Let’s file this under “odd things to think about”.
Tags: matter, mind, thoughts, youthful fancy
