picture in my mind

this post is going to be a patchwork of random things that have been gracing my mind and my screens recently.


* The more I listen to this, the more convinced I am that Big Bang could't have ended 2016 with a more perfect song. The word is that this might be Big Bang's last song ever because TOP is going into military service this year and then each one of them will soon follow him, and the next time we would possibly have all of Big Bang together again is in 5-6 years at the very least. They (and I!) would all be in their mid-30s then and who knows if they'd still want to come back!

Last Dance is so apt,
and is supposedly a song about their farewell.
Gosh, TOP, don't cry.

Like I said, I don't need sadder things on my plate, thank you.



* I am loving this (meme-thing I stole from tumblr):

Yoongi: How does one turn off their emotions? 

Namjoon: Okay, first go to settings. 

Namjoon: Wait! I'm an idiot! I thought you said emojis...

Yoongi: No, I'm still willing to try this, go ahead, I'm at settings, what do I do next?

haaaahaha. goodness, yes, Yoongi, tell me if you figure it out.


* I finished Daniel J. Siegel's Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation (the first book completed in 2017!).

I was introduced to this book when I was attending Maude Le Roux's workshop in November, about how she runs her Floortime/Autism clinic in the US, and she had used Daniel Siegel's hand-brain model to show us how autistic kids probably lacked the middle prefrontal cortex. She was referencing the book, and I followed my impulses very badly: I looked it up immediately, and bought it on the spot. In this case, good impulse. (I love it when my impulse proves true.)

I'm already holding back on my praise, but this is in the running for my favourite-ever non-fiction secular book. I'm still so in thrall with it. I cannot emphasise enough how amazing it is. I actually think it should be compulsory reading for all human beings who wish to better themselves as human beings. I mean, books like this are usually religious books, and Shaykh Hamza's translation of the Purification of the Heart comes to mind now. This book inspires me in almost the same way, guh.

Dr Daniel Siegel explains what interpersonal neuroscience is, and tries to link the mind to our actual biological brain, and it is breathtakingly insightful. The stuff that we all know about and grapple with all our lives, like anger, hurt, confusion, pain, memory, dreams, and where they all come from or how we deal with them -- explained so simply with respect to our brain anatomy and physiology, and what we can do to get better and better at it i.e. developing our middle prefrontal cortex, which appears to be the seat of the essence of man. I feel so inadequate in trying to explain it; I've actually exported 20 pages worth of quotes from my Kindle just on this book alone.

As I look through them, here are some good stuff:

Response flexibility harnesses the power of the middle prefrontal region to put a temporal space between input and action. This ability to pause before responding is an important part of emotional and social intelligence. It enables us to become fully aware of what is happening—and to restrain our impulses long enough to consider various options for response.

I don't know if I have too much or too little -- or basically I'm inconsistent -- with this response flexibility. It's called hilm in Arabic, I think; it's like a mixture of forbearance and patience, that enables you to act with intelligence, instead of being purely and primitively reactive to stimuli.

And here's one of the best descriptions of intuition I've come across:

...intuition can be seen as how the middle prefrontal cortex gives us access to the wisdom of the body.

I need more of this, obviously:

With discernment we can see that a thought or feeling is just mental activity, not absolute reality.

I might end up pasting a gazillion lines from this book. Here's one more...

.... the essence of reflection, which is central to mindsight, is that we remain open, observant, and objective about what’s going on both inside us and inside others.

I'm glad that I've always been a pretty reflective individual; though it has its downsides definitely, because apparently, reflection is somewhat the opposite of flow -- and this explains very well why I know I will not perform well at something the more 'aware' I am of it. Like sports and performance and a lot of skill-type activity -- the more you think on it, the worse you'll be at it. It really explains a lot about how my work training goes as well actually: because I'm an extremely reflective person, even in the learning moment, sometimes I'm reflecting -- cause that's how I learn -- so then I know I appear really slow and blur because my brain is God-knows-where. And people wonder why I take forever to get a skill. Gosh, I'm reminded of my colleague WZ always telling me, "Don't think, just do." Don't think?!

Eventually, I like to think though that when I get it, I get it. Like now, I love getting into the flow of assessing my new speech language cases: it comes naturally, without effort, because somehow I've integrated it into my system, and I basically wait for myself to get a feel for what's wrong with a child. That's how I think. Not by systematic lists, but like feeling something's missing or off or not quite right. Or actually, kiddo, you're fine; your parents are the ones who need to cut you some slack.


last one, a quote too awesome not to share:

“The brain is so complicated it staggers its own imagination.”

* In relation to the above, a wonderful line from Sherlock in recent times:

“Intuitions are not to be ignored, John. They represent data processed too fast for the conscious mind to comprehend.” - Sherlock Holmes (BBC Sherlock) 


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