Pasteboard Masks, III

In Auschwitz during World War II certain Nazi "doctors" performed an experiment on an unwilling subject supposedly designed to measure the effects of progressive brain damage. Ultimately what was revealed, as in all such Nazi efforts, was the experimenters' own identity as members of an inferior race.

In any case, their study involved banging a young man over the head with a hammer two or three times, and then standing back to watch what he would do. Having cataloged the effects, they would then repeat the sequence, taking aim, bringing down the hammer, stepping back to observe.

Soon the young man began to go blind. He continued to struggle at his tormenter's command, trying to walk, turn to the left, turn to the right, pick up an object. He had, after all, no other choice than to be as cooperative a patient as possible.

This horror was actually filmed, for the future glory of science no doubt. I myself have seen the film, and it has haunted me ever since.

Now did the young man's personality change as well? Did the doctor's take aim at the personality chamber in the brain? Then again, this was not likely a goal of the exercise. What was the goal? No more than a perverse amusement, I would guess. A pastime of evil.

We have all seen cartoons wherein a character will be knocked silly by a blow on the head, then smacked again so as to return him to normal. But we know now beyond a doubt, thanks to those Nazi doctors, that this is not the way it works.

Damage to the brain, to the spinal cord as a result of MS becomes manifest quite clearly in the physical realm. It may affect sensation, it may affect gait, it may affect muscle tone, it may affect cognition, and all of this is perfectly observable.

But what about the personality, that which cannot be objectively observed.

What we can say with assurance is that personality change is a product of experience, a response to a change in personal reality. Because our circumstances have changed, our viewpoint changes also in order to comprehend what is new. We describe ourselves according to who we seem to be at any given time. Jupiter is suddenly more like Mercury.

And yet, is our response really the same as personality, or is it personality that determines the nature of our response?

I have seen the gamut of reaction to MS in the past few years--ranging, person to person, from anger to insult, from malaise and depression to inspiration and enlivenment. I have seen growth toward faith and bitterness toward death.

Far from being damaged, it would almost seem that personality becomes activated, charged. It stands at attention, opens its eyes, searches both self and heavens. It becomes, in short, as overactive as the hay wired autoimmune system.

I think that it does not change, so much as it invites us to truly become. Here is the perfect moment to grow. Adversity is playing its catalyst role. Therefore, seize the day, and reap the riches disease has unveiled.