Wisdom by Hindsight
If AA wanted to put a price on my head, another friend decided that I needed some reassurance.
My friend, retired Engineer PS, shared this with me in WhatsApp.
I responded : I don’t have one.
PS: Yes, you have more.
PS, You are priceless. Thank you.
This topic was suggested by gaelikaa, for the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where currently nine of us write on the same topic every Friday. I hope that you enjoyed my contribution to that effort. The seven other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order, Ashok, gaelikaa, Lin, Maxi, Padmum, Pravin, Shackman and The Old Fossil. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, or not at all this week, do give some allowance for that too!
“The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.”
~ Sigmund Freud
I really should not be writing this post. I do dream but except very rarely, cannot remember what I dreamt.
No, I am not being facetious. This is the truth.
I have nightmares too. These too wake me up but I cannot remember what the nightmares were about.
But I am human. I day dream a lot, mostly about food! And those are easily fulfilled.
I wonder what Sigmund Freud will make of this. Perhaps he will conclude that I am just a nutcase.
I think that my brain needs to be studied by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran. May be I will become famous for being so blessed.
I hope you enjoyed reading this post on the weekly Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where thirteen of us write on the same topic. Today’s topic has been chosen by Maria The Sivler Fox. The twelve other bloggers who write regularly are, in alphabetical order, Anu, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Maxi, Maria SF, ocdwriter, Padmum, Paul, Rohit, Shackman, The Old Fossil and Will. Do drop in on their blogs and see what their take is on this week’s topic. Since some of them may post late, do give some allowance for that too!
Adj. 1. swollen-headed – characteristic of false pride; having an exaggerated sense of self-importance; “a conceited fool”; “an attitude of self-conceited arrogance”; “an egotistical disregard of others”;
A friend who receives my blog posts by email everyday and occasionally visits them to comment on, insists that I must be the man with the most swollen head in his circle of friends. Since he claims to be afraid of what some of my fans will say, he insists on being anonymous for this post. I yield reluctantly.
Being a friend of long standing, he is aware of my wide network of offline friends and since I have started to write my weekly gratitude list, he has been coming across newer ones and he sees a lot of the commentators on my posts as my online friends. Thank God he has not included some of my FB and Linkedin friends in his reckoning.
He bases this conclusion on an article that he has sent me, that appeared in The Scientific American.
The particular paragraph that he says applies to me is this one:
“By comparing the differences between individuals and the size of their online network of friends, real-world friends, as well as the size of neocortical brain regions involved in social behavior, the researchers were able to identify a strong correlation between the volume of three neocortical regions and the number of that individual’s Facebook friends. Crucially, these brain regions (the right superior temporal sulcus, left middle temporal gyrus, and entorhinal cortex, areas previously implicated in social perception and associative memory) had no relationship to the real-world social networks of these individuals. There was only one area, the amygdala, that showed a correlation between gray matter density and both forms of social networking. The other brain regions seemed to be, quite literally, wired for the web.”
If he went to my Facebook wall and looked me up in Linkedin, I am sure that he will conclude that my head will explode.
Failure with my dieting has gone to my waist and success with my relationships has gone to my head! It is a double whammy alright.
My readers will recall that I underwent surgery to replace a prosthesis in my hip.
The evening before the surgery, I was subject to a pre surgery interview by an intern. To conclude the interview she asked if I had any medical problems not listed by her and I promptly said that it may not be relevant but I suffered from arthritis of the brain. The intense thing took it down and that resulted in the hospital’s physician ringing my surgeon up to ask what the matter was!
My surgeon, incidentally a good friend, assured them that he would take care of my brain and not to worry.
Post surgery, the Physician, now well informed about the cranky old patient and the Intern came for another interview and I told them that the surgeon replaced not only my hip but also my brain. I profusely thanked the Intern for the interview without which I could not have got two replacements for the price of one.
One of my little diversions during the stay at the hospital. Wouldn’t you like to have been that Intern?
Ursula, in her comments on my blog Balding And Spam, had this interesting thought at the end. “On a side note: Someone needs to start working on you, Ramana.”
In my book, a good thought deserves careful consideration and in this case a responsible response as well. So, here is my response after careful deliberation.
There are two types of work that needs to be done on me. Let me get the easier one out of the way first, work on my body.
I have had teams of surgeons, anesthetists, interns, nurses, and other specialists, work on two vital pieces of my body, my hips, on four occasions. On the last, they almost bid me final good bye, and I think that it was meant to be that I have a long distance betrothal in the future, that I did not oblige them.
Subsequently, I had an Orthopedist and and a Neurosurgeon work on my ulnar palsy for three months, just earlier this year.
On all five occasions, their efforts were supplemented by teams of physiotherapists who took perverse delight in working on me by putting me through impossible exercises. That they were inevitably very attractive young ladies, made the experience somewhat tolerable. My bald head did not influence their insistence on my following their orders.
Now, my GP is working on my weight reduction program with a vengeance.
Apart from all these worthies, I also have a choice to make from three excellent masseurs to work on my body every fortnight or so and that I survive them, is a measure of my body’s resilience.
To top it all, whenever my brain gets fried, I also regularly take what is known here as head massage from my barber on call at short notice.
So, a lot of people have worked on my body before and some continue to do so at regular intervals Ursula.
Let me now come to the second aspect of working on me. Parents, many teachers, my late mother in law, many well meaning friends and relatives, two spiritual teachers and most importantly, many bosses while I was in employment, have all tried very hard to work on my brain, without any success whatsoever.
Ursula, if you want to try, you will have to get into a very long queue of such well wishers. None of them are willing to give up despite my assuring them, that there is no brain to work on. Quite why they are not willing to believe me is beyond me.
Do you think that it could be my bald head?