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Friday, October 4, 2019

Fifteen Minutes

A friend shared an article with me this morning from Business Insider

Neuroscience shows that 50-year-olds can have the brains of 25-year-olds if they sit quietly and do nothing for 15 minutes a day.

Hmm. How does that work on 65-year-olds? Do we, theoretically, end up with the brains of 30-year-olds, or 35-year-olds? Or is the cut off for brain renewal fixed at 50? 

I dunno. What I do know is that at the end of each day, I sit wondering how the end came so fast and just what the hell I've been doing all day. Going to bed for the night seems something I was doing only moments ago. And if sitting quietly and doing nothing for 15 minutes a day turns a 50-year-old into a 25-year-old, why doesn't 8 hours of sleep turn the same man into a babbling infant? 

Perhaps I'm missing the point. 

Einstein once explained the theory of relativity in in a manner something like this: Say you're having coffee at a café with a beautiful woman of especial interest to you. Hours may pass and seem like minutes. On the other hand, minutes at the end of a tiring work day may seem like hours. 

It's all relative, as they say. Although I cannot say quite what this relates to in regards to the issue I set out to address. I must not have gotten my 15 minutes in yesterday, for the tide seems to have turned the other direction. I'm suddenly thinking like a 75-year-old. Or maybe I always do. Who's to say that a 65-year-old has to think like a 65-year-old? For that matter, what does a 65-year-old think like?

As I am sitting at Starbucks this morning, trying unsuccessfully to reset my Starbucks password whilst ruminating about neuroscience, a man approaches me, smiling happily, and extends his hand. "Hi, Pak Will," he says. "How are you doing?"

I have no idea who this man is. No idea whatsoever. Not wanting to look stupid, or senile, or 65, I play along, returning his greeting with an absurdly gleeful smile. "Wow, long time no see!"

So the man chats along, scrolling out the usual niceties, I presume--for he is speaking very quickly in Indonesian and with a heavy accent. It is clear that he thinks I speak Indonesian fluently. I figure he must be thinking of a sharper version of me, one who spoke Indonesian fluently. I feel badly for not being that person, guilty somehow. 

But we get through okay. In time, I am able to shift from my struggle with the perplexing Starbucks app and the mysteries of neuroscience back to the present moment, the smiling man before me in the crisp Batik shirt, and the Indonesian language. I begin to pick up what he's saying, and to respond appropriately by the time he hurries away on other business. 

But I still don't know who he is.

Maybe if I sit for 15 minutes later on and do nothing, it will come to me. Like a second language. 

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