Should we take time to exercise our Brains?
August 31st 2008 21:36
Signature Tune
from the Herald-Zeitung comes this interesting article. So if you think you are too smart for these things, think again.
By Mike Fitsko
Contributor
Published August 31, 2008
My good friend and colleague John, who lives in Indiana, called me recently just checking in and refreshing our friendship that has continued for almost 30 years. Knowing him to be an avid long-distance runner, I asked him rather sarcastically if he was still competing in marathons and running every morning when he gets up.
“Not lately,” he told me. “I had arthroscopic surgery on my right knee, but it is beginning to heal.” Then John said something in our conversation that impressed me as much as the duration of our long friendship despite the miles between us.
He casually added, “So instead of running my usual five miles every day, I’ve been giving my mind a good run instead.”
Those enlightened words grabbed my attention immediately. John, who has a Ph.D. in education and was past president of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, always has been as academically astute as anyone I have ever known, but even given his remarkable intellect, he still recognizes the need to give his mind, like his body, a rigorous workout. And shouldn’t the rest of us be doing the same?
Daily we are bombarded with media ads full of advice encouraging us to exert our bodies and be more physically active, but seldom are we ever challenged to exercise our minds or engage in activities which stimulate our brains and demand our best thinking.
On the contrary, mindless television programming numbs our consciousness forcing us to become mentally lazy and intellectually unfit. Our intelligence is short-circuited because the media in general prefers appealing to our emotional instincts with its sordid headlines and tantalizing trivia.
Our brains, much like our bodies, require stimulation. While I’m certainly no neurologist, I do understand that the more we challenge ourselves intellectually, the more we motivate our memory and the more we are determined to learn, the more we unleash our mind’s potential. In fact, Alzheimer’s researchers have become more and more convinced that by keeping our minds sharp and actively cultivating and acquiring new knowledge, the more likely we are help to thwart the spread of the disease.
Tomorrow is Labor Day and a holiday for most of us. So after you’ve finished your daily run or worked up a sweat on your stair-stepper, why not take a little time to renew and energize your mind by learning something brand new, tackling a
foreign language, reading a powerful, challenging book or just exploring some new perspective on a difficult complex issue. Just engage yourself in something that requires some ongoing mental gymnastics. Stretch those mental muscles till it hurts.
Not only is a mind a terrible thing to waste, it’s a devastating thing to neglect. So do like my friend John and take it out for a good long run. You’ll be glad you did.
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