Tag: expectations

Reset

Tsk. I’d forgotten about the reset button.

I knew I had one. Every human has a reset button but I think most of us find using our reset button is like using ice cubes as charcoal briquettes. Speaking for myself, the biggest problem with my reset button is that it’s not clearly marked and easily reached. Be wonderlicious if my reset button was labeled to my navel’s left, “Press here to reset.” I’d even deal with it if I had to reach down on my bottom and thread a straightened paper clip into a tiny hole to find and press a minuscule button. But my reset button isn’t that easy.

Yet (sigh) a reset was indicated. The computers are freezing me out. I’m like a cave man, except I’m hairier, live in a house, don’t hunt, gather food at stores and markets, wear shoes, have electronic fun stuff and the electricity for them, and I don’t drive as well as a cave man. I’m reduced to not writing or writing in notebooks. I decided not to write in notebooks, except for notes, as the muses intended.

But it’s a painful withdrawal, not to sit and back space and click across a keyboard. Scenes bloom like red algae in my head. I tell myself, “Remember this to write later.” But my brain is an express lane. Only five items are permitted. Putting in notes to remember to write later bumps out my name, address and telephone number. Once they’re gone, matters like other people’s names and where I’m going have as much chance as an ice cube on a hot grill.

Took several days to remember the reset button. I owe it to Amazon. Entertaining myself, I watched a show, “All or Nothing,” about the Arizona Cardinals and their efforts to win the NFL championship. Someone made a big boo boo on the field and another player encouraged him, “Hey, that’s done. Reset.”

Yes, reset. Drop those past frustrations, errors and irritations like soiled underwear. Forgive and forget what I would normally be doing (writing) if my computer was here and working (sob). It’ll be back in two weeks, so reset.

Yes, reset. One lesson I once learned a dozen forty times is that vacuums don’t work for us as humans except when we can apply that technology to suck shit up. So I set to mind sucking that shit up and out. The other thing is that it’s not enough to proclaim that I’m resetting, dumping negative energy and going forward with a glowing positive aura. No,the things that provide me that delicious negative energy that I feast on must not only be rejected but needs to be replaced. See, that’s where the vacuum thingy comes in. Dumping the negative stuff creates a vacuum. See? Follow? Create a vision for going forward, I tells myself, as I’ve tolds myself eleven million and eleven times to the power of eleven before. That’ll bring in positive stuff to replace that negative stuff.

So, yarp, here I go again, on another day, hitting the reset button like it’s my existence’s snooze button. Let’s do this.

But first, some coffee.

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Expectations for the Brain

This week, I enjoyed discovering and re-discovering reading regarding the brain and how it works, how we can change its workings, memory, and meditation’s effects on the brain. This all seems to be about practice, expectation, and changing expectations.

DelanceyPlace.com is a website that publishes excerpts from fascinating non-fiction. Back in 2015, they published an excerpt from a 2014 book. By Matthieu Ricard, Antoine Lutz and Richard J. Davidson, the book, Mind of the Meditator, is about how mastering a task transforms the brain’s pathways.

“The discovery of meditation‘s benefits coincides with recent neuroscientific findings showing that the adult brain can still be deeply transformed through experience. These studies show that when we learn how to juggle or play a musical instrument, the brain undergoes changes through a process called neuroplasticity. A brain region that controls the movement of a violinist’s fingers becomes progressively larger with mastery of the instrument. A similar process appears to happen when we meditate. Nothing changes in the surrounding environment, but the meditator regulates mental states to achieve a form of inner enrichment, an experience that affects brain functioning and its physical structure. The evidence amassed from this research has begun to show that meditation can rewire brain circuits to produce salutary effects not just on the mind and the brain but on the entire body. …”

Addressing how ‘the adult brain be still be be transformed through experience’, HuffPost had a related story this week, To Increase Your Well-being, Train Your Brain. Mimi O’Connor wrote, “Dr. Richard Davidson, neuroscientist and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, believes that practice is the key element in changing our brains for the better. He is well known for his pioneering study with Buddhist monks. In that study he hooked the monks up to fMRI machines and observed their brains as they meditated. The monks produced gamma waves, indicating intensely focused thought, which were 30 times as strong as the control groups.’ Additionally, large areas of the meditator’s brains were active, particularly in the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for positive emotions. This study showed that conscious effort can change the neural structure, activity and function of the brain.” Dr. Richard Davidson was one of the other book’s authors, of course.

“Similar to the inspiring theme of the film Field of Dreams, “Build it and they will come,” Davidson’s motto seems to be, “Exercise them (neural pathways) and they will strengthen.”

Offering another point of view that affirms the same was Sophie McBain in Head in the Cloud. Her article addressed human memory and studies regarding the impact of computers and digital systems on our ability to remember. What becomes clear from her intriguing article is that, part of what affects our ability to remember, is our expectation of a need to remember. Here, in essence, we’re seeing the opposite impact of the other articles, where people who have computers to help them remember, don’t practice remembering, thereby weakening their ability to remember.

They’re all ripple effects, aren’t they, a sort of Doom Loop on the one hand, of expecting less and trying less, and so spiraling into achieving less, or conversely, a Halo Loop, of expecting more and trying harder.

Of course, I need to tie this back to writing. Practice writing, pursue it, try to master it, and the pathways and areas of the brain used for writing can be strengthened and transformed. Instead of believing you can’t, believe you can, and try. Being human, it’s rarely that simple, and people like Judith Sherven, PhD, can inject insights and ideas for re-working the subconscious programming behind the Doom Loop.

I’d also like to tie all of this back to time, reality and the nature of existence, but that’s for another post. Instead, I need to go off and write like crazy, at least one more time.

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