I learned a lot from London’s museums which are one of the world’s best classrooms. At the Natural History Museum, I studied how the cortex of the human brain looks like a crumpled sheet of paper!
It’s a wonder that this sheet is what gives us our identity and our consciousness.
It amazes me that this is where all our thinking happens – where all our memories are stored.
It’s a storyteller, an image creator that can fool even us.
It controls our all-important self-esteem, which determines what we think of ourselves and how well we get along with people.
This crumpled paper also plays a host to hundreds of feelings and emotions – joy, sadness, love, hate, anger, greed, generosity, and compassion and so many others.
Though it has the mindboggling ability to even imagine infinity – it can get petty, mean, and bitter.
The tragedy of the brain is that it can get mechanical. It can stop thinking by years of mundane activity – doing the same thing on and on again. Its ability to be curious, innovative, creative stops.
Over the years, it gets conditioned by society, government, religion, and marketers.
Our success lies in our ability to switch it off when we need to or, even better – to reset and keep it refreshed.