Minding the Mind

You know that feeling you get when you are learning something new and your mind is stretching to fit all the new information in and piece it together? What looks like random, scattered data now will shortly be organized and accessible.

There are also times when our mind is stretched because we are digesting a new perspective, and suddenly by reframing an old problem in a new window, we are able to see it totally differently, and recognize new solutions.

Most of the time we are not aware of how our mind works until we get busy learning something new. It is this injection of new energy that brings things into perspective. If you are consciously looking and listening, and open to new ideas, you will get these "aha" moments all the time when you suddenly are able to grasp the significance of something you simply didn't get before.

I believe that this statement is attributed to Einstein: "Once the mind expands to embrace a new concept, it can never shrink back to its original size."

We can only become larger thinkers, as we continue to assimilate new ideas. Becoming smaller would be very difficult. We could withdraw from society and go into a hermit phase, but our minds would still be enlarged from whatever it was previously. It is challenging and sometimes even uncomfortable as we expand, but it will always be so. And those things that we know, we can never un-know. We may choose to forget them or set them aside, or even see them in a different light, but our minds will still expanded, even if we have chosen to live a quieter life.