Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Making new neural pathways--DAY ONE
Just read that it takes 45 days of daily activity to create a new neural pathway in our brains. Another good reason not to stay in a negative space with negative thinking for too long lest it become habitual. I know that this blog has not been habitual for me. I feel as if the content is not as focused and sometimes I am not sure if there is any interest or coherence in what I am writing.
My other Blog "BACK IN THE BUCKET" contains thoughts, memories and experiences connected with my life in Pawtucket--where I was born and lived until I went to graduate school in 1966. In 2009 when I returned to Pawtucket to care for my aunt who lived there, I retired prematurely --or maybe just in the nick of time--from my professorship at the University of Cincinnati. I found so much the same in Pawtucket and so much that had changed. And I wanted to react to it all.
This Blog "MAKE SOMETHING OF IT' comes from a different inspiration. I was suddenly plunged into the world of retirement, care giving and decreased mobility. I also was facing and seeing for the first time the limits of my own energy and possibilities.
I wanted to explore the experience of aging and to see what the tasks were that occupy me now and how they are shaping my identity. In other words I wondered what to make of this sudden emptying out of all or most of the activities that had filled my life before. Also I wanted to discover what I could make of this new experience. I want to make something of it--but gradually I have come to see that the experiences were making something of me. I was changing and I was not in charge of the changes. Then I began to understand that change is the nature of living and that I have never been in charge of the changes. But I had an illusion that I was in charge. I have lost much of that illusion now. I want to make sense of what is left and what use God and society can make of me and the millions like me--people who are now over 70 years old and feeling their energy and certainties diminishing and their questions expanding.
So for the next 45 day--starting with this entry I will explore the experience and the reality of racing towards eternity.
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