Soft hands.
“Nothing ever becomes real ‘til it is experienced.” ~ John Keats
I was chatting with a friend about the nature of the thinking mind, specifically the power that it wields over our beliefs and actions. I find it quite interesting that three pounds of flesh locked away in a dark skull can not only convince us that it knows everything about life “out there,” but also that its knowledge is sovereign and unquestionable.
During the discussion I dug deep into my own encounters with that captive advisor and, once again, exposed the severely limited foundation of its hubris. The brain has no way to fact-check the information it uses to provide counsel. It simply looks around its cell and locates some analogous, neuronal data (memories) and makes, what it believes, are plausible assumptions. You know, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck?
Here’s an example:
I played a lot of baseball growing up and those experiences trained my brain and body, such that whenever a ball comes flying in my direction I’ll move my hand towards it and snatch it out of the air. I did this over and over and over again with a Rawlings leather glove on my hand. And practice made permanent. My brain became absolutely certain that it knew how to catch a ball.
That was until my short-lived foray into American football.
When a leather football comes rocketing towards you—especially a cold, hard spiral—if you reach out and grab at it, it will either bounce off of your hands or squirt away. To catch a football, consistently, you have to retrain your brain to have “soft hands.” Instead of moving your hands towards the ball, you have to move your hands slightly backwards, right before the ball makes contact with your hands. Your wrists and hands become loose and receptive and, essentially, cradle it.
Now here’s the thing: you can not read and reread those words, or binge watch YouTube videos, and expect to go out and catch a football with soft hands. Your brain doesn’t work that way. You have to encode “soft hands” into memory through persistent, visceral experiences (like riding a bike or tying your shoes or truly being with another person). No matter how intuitive or convincing it may feel to you, what’s in your mind about having soft hands is not reality. In fact, it’s not even close. And the same is true of all of your thoughts.
So if you haven’t experienced it, whatever it is—or experienced him, her, or them—then don’t believe your brain. Because what you think is most likely amiss (pun intended).
Stay passionate!