Just the other day I had the same
experience we all have had – I couldn't think of something, a name.
I reached and reached, I tried to think of a place to put with the
name, I reached for something to prompt me, a sound, a letter, and
nothing came. I knew I knew it but I couldn't reach it. But then I
also knew what I had to do. I had to relax, I had to distract
myself, I had to think of something else, and I had to have faith
that it would come.
And of course, it did. The name –
whatever it was, I forget now [(:-)] – just popped up from
somewhere. Eureka! That's it! Thank you!
It popped up. How did that happen?
Where did it come from? Why did it come? Good questions.
The best I can explain it is this,
although there are probably some brain scientists who can do a better
job, now that so much more is being discovered, especially in the
last five years: it comes from the Right Brain. If it comes from the
Left Brain, “you” can see how it comes. You follow your
reasoning, you make the proper associations, you envision the letters
of the name, you have an actual prompt that you always use as a clue
because this is something you regularly forget, you have a sound that
you remember, and association you use, etc. And whatever that
process is, “you” see it.
But, there are other parts of your
brain that “you” can't see working. “You” don't know how
they work, because it's another process, and it's actually coming
from somewhere else that's inaccessible to “you.” But you do see
the result in a popup message, so you know that somewhere, something
is happening. And it's got to be you, where else could it come from?
You just couldn't see the process.
As I say, with all the work being done
with functional MRI and other methods, the sites of this memory
retrieval are probably already known – I've got to find out where
to find this out. Or I don't know, maybe it will just come to me.
But now, here's the point of this post.
I bet that other things “just come to us” the same way, things
that are not memories. Take, for instance, something that has always
puzzled non-religious people who have problems with alcohol – the
“higher power.” At some point and alcoholic has to realize that
as hard as they try, as much as they try to exert willpower, they
can't quit alcohol “by themselves.” Just as reaching for that
missing memory isn't susceptible to harder and harder Left Brain
work, trying harder and harder not to drink ends in failure. So you
have to give up in order to finally win. You have to invoke the help
of a “higher power.”
I think that that “higher power” is
the same thing as waiting for the memory to pop up, except that it's
a lot harder. You just can't approach it directly. It's like taking
a shot in basketball, or pitching in baseball – it is a sin to “aim
it.” You have to let it fly and have faith. Aim it and die.
Of course, before you let it loose and
pray, you need to practice a lot. You need to get a feel for the
process and do lots of reps. But then in the end it just comes. You
meet with others and think and talk about alcohol, and what role it
plays, and how it is destructive, and what it means to you, and how
fearful you are if you don't have access to it – and then you just
have to hope that “it” comes. Where will it come from? The
Right Brain? I think so. With the Right Brain, all the work is in
preparation. If you never knew the name you are looking for in the
first place, it won't come; if you haven't studied and thought and
discussed about alcohol and overcome your shame and self-accusation,
it won't come; if you haven't thrown up 10,000 shots from 28 feet
(wait, that's a gross underestimate, but you get the point), it won't
come. But when it does come, we experience it as a gift.
Maybe this is what people mean when
they say that God is within you. Maybe this is what comes when you
pray and you see the light. Maybe this is like what comes from
dreams, another mysterious working of the brain that isn't just brute
logic, something that kind of edges in there. Maybe this is what
they say when they say dieting doesn't work, you just have to edge up
to best practices of living. Maybe it's all those things.
Like relativity came to Einstein after
he thought and thought about it from his childhood story of what it
would be like to ride a light wave and it kind of burrowed into this
head, and he worked so hard to see clocks and trains and mathematics
and physics research, and then it just came. He had his Eureka!
Moment, and he experienced it as a gift.
The mind is a mysterious thing. My old
professor of biology, George Wald, said that the two big biological
challenges of our time would be the secret of creation of life –
organic molecules in a soup and lightening striking – and the
secrets of the brain, and that the first would be solved in our
lifetimes but the second not. Well, the first still isn't solved,
which comes as a surprise. Maybe it's harder than we thought. It is
true that the problem of the brain won't be solved for a long time,
certainly, but recent progress has been astounding. I have to learn
more about it. Meanwhile, I wouldn't be surprised if sometime soon
the problem of where these popup thoughts come from will be solved.
Some brain scientist will work very hard on it and then one night it
will just come to him.
Budd Shenkin
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