Ever wondered what it is like to be absolutely free from within? What it is like to be completely at peace without being bothered about past experiences and emotions or what the future holds? How it feels to just live in the present, ignoring every negative vibe. Do you often believe you can make this happen but there is a huge restriction in your path to finding peace, maybe because of the fast pace in which life moves, fear of failure or judgement from others.
Jill Bolte Taylor's three thought provoking questions: Which hemisphere would you choose? Which do you choose and when? all depends on who we are as individuals. I personally would choose the right hemisphere which from her description is called "lala land"." An energy being connected to all the energy around me". This decision is based on the fact that to obtain peace, you just have to live in the present, thinking about the past and even while living the present trying to figure what the future holds isn't gonna bring peace into one's life. It brings about a connection between ourselves and nature. It enables us appreciate what we have at the moment, see life as a beautiful and perfect place.
What I have always been choosing and what I'm still choosing is the left hemisphere because it is quite inevitable because we humans are bound to make every decision based on the past and everything we even do in the present is projected towards the future. It is pretty hard to just living the present. I once watched a movie and in it a guy who was so into taking amazing photos of nature climbed a lot of mountains in the winter. It literally took him 3 weeks to finally get to the top and he waited for days until a special breed of cat came out with his camera and all his equipment set up in front of him.eventually did but he didn't take a picture of it. He changed his mind because of how beautiful and magnificent the scene was and what he said was" sometimes you don't have to take a picture of every experience. You just got to live in it and let it sink in".
Finally for the last question, When would I choose what hemisphere or what way of life to live? My answer would obviously be the right but realistically I know for a fact that would be quite impossible for me to live every day of my life. I am human and I am bound to think about the past and future more than I do of the present.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with you I would also choose to live in the right hemisphere of my brain if I could. When Jill Bolte Taylor describes in her video the feelings she had when her left part of her brain was silent she described it as " a feeling of finding Nirvana." I for one would love to know what finding Nirvana feels like. To not have to worry about our past and the things in our life that make us stress. To live in the moment each and every day would be an amazing experience. I also know that I am a person who lives in the left hemisphere of my brain always planning my day and letting the things from my past control the things that I do today. That is just who I am and at the current moment in my life I live in the left hemisphere of my brain instead of my right one. When would I choose to live in my right hemisphere I would obviously choose to live this way everyday but realistically I live in my left hemisphere. I do plan in my future to try anad live in the moment and to appreciate all that is around me to connect with all the energies in the world.
ReplyDeleteI love that you wrote about the movie “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” it's actually one of my favorite movies, since it is centered about living in the moment and traveling. However I would have to disagree with you, I would love to live in the moment, to live in the “right here, right now” as Jill would say, while living in the right hemisphere. I actually think life is made up of making “every decision based on the past and everything we even do in the present is projected towards the future.” However, the right hemisphere can also do this by choosing to live in the moment and see or suffer the consequences in the future. This type of lifestyle can be classified as careless, clueless and stupid, but it is also successful. This lifestyle is successful because you are not worrying about your future, you are just simply waiting for it to happen so that you can go out and live it. As they say living in the present is a gift, so by living in the moment we get to live in the certain, instead of just living in the uncertainty. I also believe that with this type of lifestyle you are able to experience life to the fullest by just living it instead of caring about what could’ve happened, what should've happened of what didn’t happen.
ReplyDeleteI would also choose to live in the right hemisphere of my brain because I also think that it wold bring me bliss. The left side of the brain deals with past and future events while the right hemisphere deals with the present moment and gives you a feeling of living in the moment. Not having to worry about the future and wondering if I would fail or succeed and also not having to worry about the past haunting me or being a burden to me. I would be a whole hell of a lot happier if I didn't have to worry about tomorrow or yesterday and if I only had to worry about today. In John Lennin's song Imagine he says, "Imagine all the people living for today." I would love to experience that and to feel the love and bliss of today and not the worries and struggles of tomorrow. The stressors of tomorrow (the future, tests, class schedules, graduating, job searches, etc.) Mistakes, bad grades, lost loves, bad experiences, arguments, fights, etc. are all examples of the way the past ways down on us (result of the left brain thinking). So yes I would prefer to just use the right hemisphere so I could live in the moment.
ReplyDeleteIf I could choose which side of my brain to think with all the time it would be my right side of the brain. I think it would be amazing to live every day in the moment and not worry about a thing in the past or future. Jill Taylor explains that this feeling she felt was a feeling of nirvana. Living a life full of fun and surprise would be much better than living a life of regret, worrying and overall anxiety about the future. However, this is not how I live. Unfortunately, I am living life today with the left side of my brain. It is any student’s nature to live life in the left side of the brain. We are constantly asking ourselves what we have to get done every day, week, month and year. We have to balance our time so that we can achieve our goals and later be successful in life. If a college student lived just in the moment, their grades probably wouldn’t be so great. In my future it is possible that I could live life in the moment if I have graduated college and have my life together. As of right now, I am not living in the moment but I would like to sometime.
ReplyDeleteIf I could choose what side of my brain to live on I would definitely choose my right side. As a human I do however, live on and constantly choose my left side. It would be completely amazing to not over think or over analyze the past, and current events. I feel as if living on your left side creates a whole deal of trouble compared to living on the right side. According to Dr. Jill Taylor’s experience and observation the right side seems more relaxing and calm. To be able to live in the present completely and not connected it back to a negative situation or over analyze it would be incredible. I would love to just live in the moment and not over think it! I agree that as humans it’s almost impossible to just live on the right side, because naturally we always connect everything to past experiences. Which makes me wonder, could we really try to just live on the right side if we wanted to? Personally I feel that we couldn’t. However, as amazing as it sounds to live on the right side I feel like it’s healthy to use both. I would definitely choose the right side of my brain to live on, but using both is primarily healthier and better.
ReplyDeleteI wish i could live in the right side of my brain, but like you said, its unrealistic because we base our choices and thoughts off of past experiences and calculate the risks and rewards of every decision. In general man is a thinking being, we all wish we could live in a place where our energy flowed and mixed with the molecules around us, like Dr Jill Taylor did for a brief time, but that connection to the computer like left hemisphere always creates mental roadblocks in order to preserve our consciousness and rational thought. Dr. Jill Taylor had the amazing opportunity to feel that expansiveness of the mind as she called it. She felt like there was no way she could fit all of herself back into her body. the left side acts as a regulator for these euphoric emotions and i believe that thinking about the past and future is a way to humble ourselves, without it we would all be floating around feeling as large as the universe. Like you i also feel more connected to the left side of my brain because i feel that calculating, linear thought process. The brain is an amazing organ, and the functions it performs to contain our individual universes within us is truly astounding.
ReplyDeleteIf I could choose what side of the brain i live in, it would be the right side. Like most of us said, we would all like to live in the moment. But to me, It's just not possible. I constantly worry about what's in store for me, or if i'm going to make it through college. I would dream to live in the moment , and just go with the flow. It would be amazing to have that mindset and not worry whats going to happen tomorrow or what happened the other day. As Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor described the morning of her stroke , i was shocked. She had told of her not feeling any stress from her job. That would be amazing. I know i'm young but I still have stress. But yeah the left side of her brain brought her back to reality. So sometimes i rather live in the right hemisphere to escape reality.
ReplyDeleteI think your thought process for this blog was done very well and it almost convinced me to change my mind, still i think i would like to live in the right side of my brain compared to the left side. We spend the majority of our lives to worries about the future and how we messed up our past, and to truthful, it is the number one reason i feel so stressed out all the time. Yet imagine if that could go all away, imagine for once in your life you could forget about everything else and just live in there and now. Instead of worrying about everything around you, you can finally realize what is in front of you, instead of letting it slip away due to always being worried about what is coming next. In chess the object is too always be two steps ahead of your challenger, but ask any real player and they will tell you that thinking to far ahead can make you do the one thing you didn't want to do. Its the same thing in life, thinking ahead by all means is not a bad thing, but only focusing on the future, will keep you away from the present and lead you to do the things that younger wanted to happen.
ReplyDeleteGiven the opportunity I would choose to only use the right side of my brain, like the majority of the class. Unfortunately, I use the left side of my brain the majority of the time. I would like to use the other half of my brain because, as stated earlier, it is a place of nirvana where the past and future hold no meaning. This is what I spend everyday trying to achieve. My mind is constantly running through different scenarios at all times of the day, taking in information and inputting it into different scenarios. I would love to be a resident of the "lala land" Taylor describes.
ReplyDeleteI follow your thoughts on this subject clearly and I understand how you feel about everything you have written, but I would much rather live my life in the right hemisphere of my brain now. It would be spectacular to be able to live in and experience this type of “la la land,” as Jill Taylor affectionately puts it. To be able to discover the highly sought after Nirvana within yourself and be able to step into that place whenever you want or need to would be an amazing experience that I would kill to have. I would love not having to “make every decision based on the past,” because if I could live without the weight pressing on me to take those decisions and try and project them to the future, I’d be free of the fear of failing. I think it would be beneficial to be able to live in the moment instead of constantly stressing over the past and worrying about what the future will hold. It would knock away a lot of unnecessary stress and free me to be happier in life. As everyone else is saying, I too am living in the left hemisphere of my brain. I do worry about the future and I do constantly dwell on what I’ve done in my past. It’s because I know what this feels like, that I want to learn to shed these worries. I would choose to live in my right hemisphere today if I could, but I can’t. Jill Taylor speaks of her experience with so much emotion and it only shows how much she’s learned from stepping into the right hemisphere of her brain. She’s experienced this beautiful place inside of her, and maybe one day, more people can fell the way she felt.
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ReplyDeleteAs it seems to be the popular choice, I would also choose the Right Hemisphere of the brain. Living in the present is definitely a healthy lifestyle atleast in my eyes. The times when I am most down or stressed out is when I am thinking of something in that past or something in the future. Thinking too much in the past ESPECIALLY only in the past, is very stressful since nothing can be done to change or alter it. A much more content and positive feeling can be attributed to people who focus on the present and what they can do NOW. Also, overthinking the future can be really stressful and oftentimes can blur individuals especially me of enjoying what is right in front of them. A life without the right hemisphere of the brain would seem stressful, incomplete, and something I would defintely not enjoy.
ReplyDeleteIn a perfect world I would choose to live in the right side of my brain, stress free without a care in the world. However, due to the fact society is far from perfect, I would live on the left side of my brain. Dr. Jill Taylor exclaims that the right side of your brain controls how you feel right at that moment in time. Using the right side of your brain causes for sponsanious actions with out much regard for the future. The left side allows us to think about the past and the future. The left side helps us make consious decisions that could effect us later down the road. We also make connections to past experiences with the left side of our brain, and being able to make connections is important when it comes to learning, and making impactful choices. Living in todays world, in order to succeed you would need to live on the left side of your brain.
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