I am obsessed with Alzheimers. I dont know if this is because I am, or the media is.
In any case I'm constantly reading articles about how the brain is plastic, changeable; that there is hope that mine will work properly again with the right exercises.
Then I came across this article in the Atlantic on 'Googlethink''and it reminds me of the hundreds of shortcuts I take in a day and each of these is doing more harm than good.
Lock a cat inside a flat for a year and it wont be able to walk along a fence top properly. It loses important skills.
That's kinda what it's like to use a calculator or spellcheck. Brain work is as important as fence prowling for cats. So I've started doing arithmetic again, at the supermarket – and to my surprise, I get a kick out of it!
There's a theory that the solution to too much noise is not to run away from the city but to just get some more moments of silence in your life. Like counterbalancing a junk food blow out with a healthy meal of steamed vegetables.
Meditation is like cleansing the mind of the busyness of thinking too much.
Busting out a paper and pen and doing some maths is the perfect antidote to the deskilling powers of Excel's 'autosum' button.
One just needs to exercise some self control. Google must not become the source of all your information.
And, wacky search terms often yield interesting results.... but i love a bit of serendipitous dipping into random books at the library or bookshop too. Try it one day. Today.
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