The Premise

Two months ago today, I had brain surgery. I always imagined Brain Surgery to be the scariest thing for a functioning human. Yet, mine was so simple. A small hole drilled on my skull, tap the cerebrospinal fluid and redirect it down to my stomach or intestines or down there somewhere. The down-there portion didn't interest me enough to make a note to where. I have an incision in my stomach. It doesn't scare me like the stitches on my head did. Now, it feels like the best surgery to have, if one must have something or the other.

Our mind associates emotional context and personal association to every word the brain stores. The Brain is an organ. The Mind is what makes us ourselves. I studied Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in grad school because of that persistent fascination with the brain. Tremendous respect, ergo deep fear of a surgery to my brain was the worst I could imagine happening to myself. Which, of course did!

We get what we think what we cannot handle. Not because of some diabolic Karma, or a vindictive God staking the odds, or any destiny. Rather, as a result of what we think. I am not responsible for everything wrong with me, just exacerbating them, good and bad alike. My illness and the painstaking recovery to a place of normal with this body and this mind has now given me a perspective I have not had ever before. It might even be worth sharing to fortuitous readers. I have found things that are relevant to me when I am looking for something else. May be what I have to share will prove important to someone else. Even if it is irrelevant to anybody else, my mind is simply too beautiful to be kept quarantined, talking to itself all day, everyday.

I am back to blogging now after at least 15 years of digital silence. Social Media makes no sense to me. Never did, even when I was brain damaged. I have no active Facebook account. Have never seen the point of Twitter. Never signed up to Instagram. Used LinkedIn and now that joins my arsenal of inactive accounts that need to be removed before it is hacked. I loved blogging when I did have a blog. However, questions of existence can be extended to any activity. Ask yourself enough existential questions about any activity you enjoy, and keep asking them with no answer, till you will stop that which you enjoyed before as nihilistic. Imagine Picasso not seeing the point of his paintings. Because, of course there wasn't any point. I am not Picasso. I am not yet psychotic and so far, not as good a Picasso at anything I have tried. I never thought life is pointless, always thought cause and effect was important and yet, nothing made sense. It is enough pointlessness when you are basically living in your head with no social interaction.

My chronic Hydrocephalus makes it difficult to let go off thoughts, especially non-emotive ones. Emotional thoughts cause me stress, so much stress that they make me scream, yell, break things and then feel drained. Which is fine, as it is a cycle that ends somewhere, even badly! It is the non-emotive things that make me wish I can somehow clarify my thoughts to myself. Writing helps, but having finished a bulky journal full of interesting thoughts in the past two months, I have decided to see if blogging can again make me socially active in a way I might possibly enjoy.

History is relevant and I appreciate its importance. One cannot be all the labels that apply to me and still not appreciate that Past is indeed Prologue. My Past is my history, story, and me in my entirety uptil this moment. What I do right now shapes my next moment. What I did till the last moment is all I am right now. To say that history is useless is something an imbecilic moron in a bubble would say. I do qualify as an imbecilic moron in a bubble, mostly, but I do have two thoughts I can rub together in my defense. And, that makes all the difference between the kind of morons. It is not ironically that I call myself a moron. I am deeply idiotic in a great many different ways. Most of us are. My saving grace is that I know it. My mortal fear of not being an idiot kept me from doing anything at all for the past few years. That inaction was also a direct consequence of my chronic condition coupled with perfectionism. Popular belief is that setting very high standards for oneself leads to depression. In my case, I refused to set my standards lower, to just accept that I cannot possibly do everything I want, so let's try something else. Instead, I self-diagnosed my condition, albeit completely wrong. I deduced that I am an adult with ADHD, undiagnosed and depressed or something as a result. I insisted on an MRI to rule out everything else, which the doctors did reluctantly. Lo and Behold, see the brain images with more water than brain! After about six months, here I am - still here and better, hopefully! That is my medical history! It is not all I am or even the most important I in me.

What are we in our entirety? When a white Nationalist says "I am White", I am surprised that this is the one word to define them. When a woman says "I am female", does she not recognize that she is more or less than her sex? Or a man saying that he is one? How  is it reasonable to define ourselves as any one or one of a few things at any time? What is my identity? There is not one identity to anything, let alone a conscious human. I am human, a female, a mother, an Engineer, a student most times, a foreigner in some land, a native of some land, of some skin color, secular, a scientist, sometimes logical, mostly quick-tempered, mostly artistic, mostly interesting, socially awkward, intellectually curious, socially tolerant, ignorant of nuances, intolerant of bigotry... My identities quickly morph into a list of characteristics and then into fuzzy adjectives. Descriptions are like identities- they are mercuric. I am right now at this moment coherent enough and care enough to write down my thoughts. Will these thoughts define me forever? Definitely not. All I can hope for is that they evolve for the better. My identities will change. Each step I take in sickness or consciousness will define me in my eyes as that conglomeration of adjectives. Getting healthy enough to sort through these identities makes me grateful to be alive. Pondering upon my existence is a mere side-effect of existence. I want to thank myself for existing. I don't think that I am because I think. I am here, therefore I am. I think, also therefore I am. Nietzsche perhaps should have paid more attention to his health too before discarding it as irrelevant. Then perhaps his very life-blood of ideas wouldn't have been hijacked by ideologies he hated. Super-Mensch need to eat too, as he probably learnt! I am unlike Nietzsche in that I have out-grown being idealistic to the exclusion of everything else.

Being here is Super Enough! Everything that went right and wrong make me everything that I am. Not just the thinking me, but also the vehicle that carries the thinking me around. I am constantly getting better, but the me right now is very good enough - for me. Catering to anybody else's standards cannot definitely work for anyone. I am not being militantly individualistic - rather just being self-sufficient. As long as I do not try to hurt anybody else, I can keep trying to be the best me - which might end up helping others. I am extraordinary because I don't settle for existing. Normal definitions of normal health, normal thought or normal anything is just the lowest common denominator. None of us are the lowest common anything. That is indeed what makes us the species on top of the food chain. The Me I am now is super compared to the me that was two months ago. Ergo Sum!