The Mystery of our Minds

The more I learn about our brains and neurobiology, in my oh-so-lay-woman-way, the more I become convinced of two truths:

1.)  The human anatomy, and specifically the brain, is truly miraculous and worthy of nothing less than awe. And,
2.) We know as much about our neurobiological inner space as physicists know about outer space; which is to say, a teeny, tiny, speck of infinity. These frontiers are brand new.

I contemplate these truths in my very ordinary day-to-day life.

For example, before my husband leaves for work each morning at 6 a.m., he walks down the hall to our 6 year-old son's bedroom and gives him a kiss goodbye on the forehead.  Our son is sound asleep at the time, and never even stirs.

This morning, after doing his ritual goodbye kiss as usual, my husband asked me, "do you think he knows that I do that every morning?"

"Yes," I definitively answered. 

I added, "before I was a parent, I would have said 'no,' but now, since having multiple experiences of the children surprising me with their responses to the very subtle shifts, movements, moments that  they notice (consciously and unconsciously), I've become a believer in the mystery of the mind. 

Last Sunday I took my father-in-law for a walk in the New England woods.  My father-in-law was diagnosed this year with Alzheimer's Disease.  It is in the early stages, and he seems to be responding well to medication at this time- which is all the good news. 

But the bad news, at this stage anyway, is he no longer seems able to accrue new memories in his conscious mind.  Whether a pleasant, unpleasant or neutral experiences, the moments just do not seem to lodge into the ridges of his brain in a place where he can retrieve them when he wants to. 

Like in the "old days" when we would print out photographs of an experience we wanted to remember and put  them in a photo album, my father-in-law is not able to put anymore pictures into his album.  That function of his brain has seemed to have stopped working.

I was thinking about this new reality for him, and for our family, as we were hiking along, looking at the beautiful red, orange and yellow fall foliage.  I watched my father-in-law smiling and laughing as my son, who had joined us too, was chasing the leaves as they fell from the trees and was trying to catch them before they hit the ground, and I had the thought of the old saying, if a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there, does it make a sound?

My father-in-law was clearly experiencing joy in that moment,  and another truth I believe is the experience of joy does all kinds of good things for our brains in ways far beyond my abilities to comprehend.  But, I also wondered, was this moment being recorded into a memory for my father-in-law, somewhere no longer retrievable to him?  Is the memory now there, even if he cannot recall it?

Or, is this where collective memory comes into play? 

Mindfulness and meditation teach us, among other things, that we are interconnected.  We are not separate.  Therefore, in the very hardcore world of biological realities like Alzheimer's Disease, is there possibility for our memories (the good, the bad, and the ugly) to be held in collective consciousness, or in this case, the family albums of myself and my son?

I saw my father-in-law yesterday at my son's football game.  It had been 3 days since our near picture-perfect New England fall walk in the woods.  I know now not to say things like "do you remember?" to my father-in-law, I just follow his lead.  It seemed apparent that he had no conscious recollection of our day together, and so I did not refer to it or bring it up because lately he gets quite upset by moments of awareness that his memory is not what it used to be.

But I was left wondering, in all the mystery of the mind that is currently unknowable to us, is there any trace of our walk in the woods stored somewhere inside him? In his brain? In his body? In his cells?  Or, is it enough, that I carry the memory? And my son too.

I don't know the answers to any of these questions. As  I said, to me, it is a mystery.

Here's what I do know though.  The joy we all experienced in the moment, looking at the canopy of oaks, maples, birches, and pines, was why there are books titled The Miracle of Mindfulness that generations upon generations of people will read.