Mental Safeguards

A continuation of 'Questions of Reality'?

It's difficult to learn new things. The brain is designed to be conservative, and not to throw itself into making new grooves at a moment's notice. As a result, we have to overcome some degree of mental elasticity in order to learn anything without it reverting almost immediately. At the moment that can be personally applied to learning Spanish and Greek, progressing in swimming, and preparing for dreaded interview days. Oh, the horror of interviews, if only they could be conducted in parks surrounded by green things and statues of Inuit fish salesmen. I wonder if the Inuit have fish salesmen? They must do, surely?

For those who haven't talked to a counsellor, or studied the brain, or even haven't ever seen a picture, the brain is a big nobbly mess that only completely forms at about the age of 23 with the knowledge of mortality. It can be thought of as consisting as many many grooves, like those on an old-fashioned record, which represent behaviour patterns. In order to change a behaviour, you symbolically have to etch a new groove onto your old set and use it in preference to the old one, which takes a lot of ongoing effort even at 23, and is why the brain is designed to be essentially conservative and not do that kind of work. As thinking creatures, it's our job to break that urge and do the new thing, even if it's hard. Anyway, let's get back to the gibberish.

There is a way around the catch-22 of learning new things against your own brain's wishes. There is one fundamental behaviour born into every human being that helps them learn new things in an entirely non-threatening way. What are we talking about? Well, the power of play, of course! Games have been the uncertain and hidden testing ground for new skills for decades! Do I have evidence? No, of course, this is all unsubstantiated conjecture, but it does make sense. We can do all kinds of things we wouldn't normally do in play: Invent new codes and languages, be creative in the most free of forms, deploy strategies and tactics previously never used, deduce meanings from assembled clues, and be brave beyond all imagining. The grooves can be shifted just a little, and often just enough.

Being open to new things isn't a one time step, but an ongoing drive into new experience. If you can persist in that drive, then the whole world is your oyster. If not, then perhaps you'll end up writing more than four hundred and fifty blog posts on the ephemera of life. In fact I just watched the beginning of Ben Stiller's 'The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty', which was so good that it will be saved for a fully wakeful viewing on the morrow. The morrow that will see the inflexible grooves of life tested as preparations for something entirely new either come to fruition or crumble into the custard of failure.

The key to changing the grooves is remembering that they're there at all.

O.