HAVE YOU LOST YOUR SO-CALLED MIND?

Blog number seventy-six                                11 Feb. 2007

Walking to "work" one day, I stopped at a corner to tie my shoe laces.  When I bent over, everything was normal, I could see the stop sign, the sidewalk, the street, the grass between the sidewalk and the street, but I lost all perspective of what was up, down, left, right, all spatial references.  It seemed to me that the only smart thing to do was to relax and let gravity take me to a safe place, so I collapsed.

For days afterwards, I would tell people what had happened to me and then invariably ask, "What was that?"  I was so puzzled and curious.  I realized from this why amnesia victims try so hard to find out the past.  It drives a person crazy. About three days later I suddenly remembered Teresa and I finding an old woman at the bottom of a stone stairway, bleeding.  She told us she had bent over and suddenly collapsed because she didn't know what else to do.  Every time she told the story, she would end with the question, "what was that?"

I found out that it was vertigo.

I had an epiphany that we must all have abilities totally unknown to our conscious mind that if we lost them ...

My Dad had a stroke and I asked him what it was like and he said, "I was in my body, but I couldn't move anything."  I can't imagine what that must be like, know what I mean?  Another thing was that my Dad was always a bombastic person, totally an extrovert.  After the stroke he seemed to spend most of the time silent - but aware.  I think that experience shook his world and he started wondering instead of pontificating.  Might be good for everyone to have that experience, I am thinking.  It would be especially good for those who believe that we are our brains. You know - idiots.