The Monster In Me

My mother will remember telling me this story.

Once upon a time there was a very pious and hardworking but poor man. He worked from dawn till late at night to feed his wife and children. He was always heard singing hymns in praise of the Lord. One day, in frustration, he cried, Lord, I work so hard and so long and even then I barely earn enough to keep my family together. The Lord heard his prayer and said, well son, I'm going to give you a tool to help you get through your work quickly. He clapped his hands and summoned a genie. He told the man that the genie would do anything that it was commanded to do. But there was one condition. The genie would ALWAYS have to be kept busy. If it wasn't working on something, it would go on a rampage and destroy the very master it was working for.

The man was very happy.

The first few days went smoothly enough. The man got the house rebuilt, the garden replanted, the fields harvested, the grains stocked. He asked the genie to make new clothes for his wife and children. He ordered the genie to help his wife with the tasks around the household. It used to take the genie a flash to do what was asked of it, so very quickly, the man solidified his lifestyle and household. Life was calm, beautiful.

One fine day, the genie came up to its master and said, Master, I have done everything you commanded me to do. Now what?

The man looked around for things that his slave could do for him, but apparently everything was in order. The genie was beginning to get impatient, and it was then that the man remembered under what condition he had been given the genie. He looked at the genie, who looked back at him with blazing impatience in its eyes.

"Oh no, this is the end!", thought the poor fellow.

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Never mind for now, how Mom's tale ended. The point of the story is that the genie apparently resembles the mind in each of us. Give it something to do and it's happy. If it's not doing anything, it's hungry for something that will make it work. Different people manage their minds differently. Some minds are patient enough to wait for more work. Some need fuel ALL the time. I fall into the latter class. (While we're on this, which class do you fall into?)

My mother's solution to the man's predicament was to erect a tall obelisk in the center of the courtyard and command the genie to climb up and down it as long as there was no other work. In the real world, for her, that translates to continuous meditation, all-absorption in the single task of concentrating on one's subconscious.

Some people can actually manage that. I know Mom does. I can't.

And even right now, this minute, along with trying to plan out my PhD dissertation layout, reading some journal articles for my next class, and helping my room-mate with her image processing assignment (Technically speaking, this is the fourth time I've 'taken' the course. Once I go into academia this is the one course I'm dead sure I will offer to teach.), I'm still sorting through half a dozen things in my head. I'm still restless. "Running around" in my head. Beats me sometimes how the human mind manages to process so much at one go. Create connections. Absorb information. Make deductions. Train its neurons. And in the process, think and act.

Awesome.

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P.S. Don't kill me, but this entire lesson in philosophy is because I'm studying for a Functional Neuroimaging class right now. Ouch.