It seems that one of the major desires of humans is to maximize how they utilize their brains. Perhaps not everyone has this desire, and it may even be that not even a majority of people have this desire, but there has always been at least a select few who have dedicated themselves to figuring out how to utilize the human brain to the greatest extent possible. I myself have always been somewhat intrigued by this idea, this notion that we have a plethora of brain power that goes unused our whole lives. At least that's what we are taught. We learn that we only use a small percentage of our overall brain throughout our lives. But why can't we tap into that unused segment of our brains and perhaps even more intriguing, what would be possible if somehow we were able to tap into that segment of our brains? The other night I saw about a half hour of the movie "Limitless" in which the notion of tapping into that unused segment of our brains is tackled. In the movie, it is tackled with a pill that seemingly pulls back the veil and allows us to learn everything almost instantaneously and retrieve every bit of information we have ever learned. As interesting as this may seem, taking a pill to augment our own brain's ability can never be a good thing in the long run. Like any drug, it is not permanent and of course can have side effects. My big sticking point with the movie (and yes I know its a movie and not real life), is that it portrays ordinary life as dull and boring compared to life on this magic little pill. Of course, in real life there is no magic pill so I have no basis for comparison, but I would argue that life is as vivid or as dull as we make it. We can choose to see everything in shades of gray or we can add color to our lives, noticing the minutia that fill our everyday lives and adds brilliance to everything we do. While we may not be able to utilize every corner of our brains, how often do we float through life using only a portion of what is available to us? Its easy to get caught up in the hum drum activity of life, the daily routines, the grind that we put ourselves through. But none of these have to be boring, dull, and "routine" even though routine is what we all have some of in our lives.
One trend that I have noticed, and this will be a statement of the obvious, is that more and more people have their ears plugged with music when walking or exercising. There are still a few hold outs, myself included, who like to hear the world around them, let their thoughts flow freely without the influence of technology or music, and simply become more engaged with the world around them. Sure, music or audio books can make exercise or even walking seem to go by more quickly even at times make it seem less painful, but at what price? What are we missing out on when we tune out the world? I think we are missing a lot, not just in noticing all the little nuances of the world around us, but also of that necessary time we need to let our brain's just be, let our thoughts wander, and simply absorb the world around us. Every morning when I take my dogs on a walk, I never listen to music or anything else, I simply walk. With nothing to dull my attention, I notice little things every day on my walks that I feel I wouldn't notice otherwise. This isn't to say that music at times can't aid our attention or our focus, I believe it can, but most of the time, if we let our thoughts focus on themselves and let them process everything that is going on in our lives, we will be better off in the long run. Any time of exercise, it has been shown, can increase the brain's potential and working capacity, maybe not by much and maybe not permanently, but the process of walking or running releases endorphins that calm the mind and allow it to sort through things more clearly. While we may not be able to achieve limitless potential in our brains, we can assist our brains in processing the world, solving problems, and otherwise just getting through our days a little less stressed. Everyone has the potential to get overwhelmed by the world, our brains going haywire trying to process everything that we do and are involved in. If we simply give our brains even a small chance every day to unwind, process, and relax, then perhaps we can increase our brain's potential even just a little bit.
In recent years, researchers have found that our brains are more elastic than we once thought. We can learn new things at any age and in fact re-wire the way our brains function. I remember reading an article a while ago in which a study was done to see how elastic our brains really are. They took a person and had him learn all the roads in a city to become a cab driver. Over the course of the time it took to learn the roads, in a sense, the map of the city, the area of his brain dedicated to spacial recognition in terms of roads and directions increased while other areas that were previously larger and had more activity decreased. So while there in fact may be a limit to what we can do with our brains, we can increase the blood flow and activity in different areas just by focusing our attention on different tasks. What is to say that if we focused on a variety of different tasks that we couldn't increase our brains function in a number of areas. It doesn't happen by itself, it takes repeated and focused efforts, but the fact remains that we can always learn new things and keep our brains alive simply by making sure we don't tune out by plugging in. One of the main reasons we would want to keep our brains in shape is to stave off any degenerative diseases in the brain such as Alzheimer's or dementia. The more we put our brains to work, the better they will function and the longer we will be able to utilize our brains. Limitless brain power may be a fantasy, at least in our current day and age, but we can still augment what is possible by increasing both our focus and our relaxation. Our bodies can not go without rest, and the same holds true for our minds. While sleep may give us a good amount of rest for our brains, we also need to give our brains a rest during the day. We need to give our brains a break from all outside stimulus and allow them to process the day at hand, what we have done and what we have learned. The only way we can easily commit to memory things we have learned is by allowing our brains to rest and to not keep them going 24/7. In this day and age where we think we should have limitless power over our environment, we still need down time. We may have a better handle on the world than did our ancestors centuries ago, but our brains still need rest and rejuvenation to function properly. Limitless brilliance can only come through our own desire to move forward and recognize the world around us, not through the window of technology, but through the window of our brain and our own ability to see, think, and live.
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