The Occupation of the Mind

Found only in the Indo-Pacific and Oceania brackish waters and mangroves  is a species of fish commonly called  the archer fish, or specifically the banded archer fish. This special fish has a unique adaptive ability. Not limiting itself to catching prey that are in the same water it swims in, the archer fish has expanded its meal selection to insects that are normally beyond the reach of other fish - an almost mythical evolutionary advantage.

By rapidly pressing its tongue to the roof of its mouth it pressurizes water into a jet like spout to hit insects from two feet above the water line to as high as five feet. Once the insect is dislodged from its perch and into the water it is now just a hapless helpless water creature, its wings once capable of propelling it to the air with grace and speed now reduced to mere edible appendages. Bigger species of archer fish were observed to hit targets up to almost ten feet above water. Keep in mind that is nearly as high as the professional basketball hoop. What is even spectacular is that they must compensate for refraction because the image of the target prey from underwater is severely refracted as to belie its actual position (from the fish's point of view that is an inch or two below). Granted they do not have a 100% success rate, their average can be as good as the mediocre free throw shooter in the NBA. Obviously, it is not called an archer fish for nothing.

I brought this up  because we can wonder about how this fish does it, with a brain no larger than a BB pellet,  without the luxury of complicated algorithms to adjust or correct its aim despite a seemingly false image location of its target at its retina.The archer fish and all the other living things in the animal kingdom that do amazing things, no matter how skillful they are, they will never be able to attain the ability that we take for granted - that of being able to wonder. It is just us who can wonder about these things.

How does a woodpecker survive the jarring that its bird brain is subjected to in search of a meal? Their beak-strikes have a magnitude 1,000 times the force of gravity every time it hits a tree bark. Why go to all that trouble? Couldn't it catch grubs like most other self respecting birds do without a jack hammer for a beak? The bigger question is: how can a tree survive an infestation if every larva of beetle gets to adulthood? The woodpecker intervenes where the larvae are vulnerable though well hidden and encased by the tree's tough bark exterior because once they are fully developed the beetle will not only do damage, it will reproduce and potentially decimate the whole forest. Again, we wonder. The woodpecker's brain sustains a hundred times the force that an NFL player's head is subjected to while fully protected by a scientifically designed helmet made from Kevlar or carbon fiber, yet it is the football player who gets a concussion. The woodpecker just does its thing, unencumbered by any sense of wonder at all.

Here is the thing though.  Adding all of the animal kingdom's special abilities, they will all pale in comparison to just the one organ that we have. And this one organ is also distinct from all others in our anatomy. Every organ in our body has a function, each one doing it very well (except for the appendix whose purpose continues to elude anatomists and biologists). This bio-supercomputer performs complex functions many times the degrees at which others operate yet so well cloaked in mystery, often even misunderstood. 

How can we not fully understand it with our mind and even by all our collective minds since it is the brain that is home to every thought ever made possible. Are we to believe that the brain has not given up all its secrets? Try as hard as it can the mind seems so limited in understanding the very physical organ that hosts it. Or, are we merely confused? Are we talking about two entities actually? Have we not already mapped out every part of the brain's topography but that it is the mind that holds the mystery? Yes, that must be it. The brain we can scan, dissect, stimulate with probes; it is the mind we cannot see, yet it is the one that makes us ask and wonder.  It is the one organ to have an occupation or that it is one that must be kept occupied. What will happen if not?

Retirees know this first hand. Where and when once their minds were occupied constantly at solving, creating, wondering, the change can be so abrupt that some folks allow the unemployed mind to suffer the most of all ill effects ever to afflict a person in his or her lifetime. However, we ought not forget that retirement is nothing more than a transition that is defined purely as an economic status. We should not ignore the fact that we are the same person yesterday on our last day at work as we are today at the first day of retirement. How often though that some of us immediately in an instant makes a sudden revision of our self image? That is where we begin to examine the next occupation of the mind.

How quickly the hard-charging executive or the hard working metal worker, welder or salesman forget that taking it easy in retirement does not mean taking the easy way out of a hobby, regular exercise, or taking that volunteer work he or she aimed to do once there was time. Suddenly there is time and what used to be a high RPM engine of the self motivated, dedicated employee, has shifted to the lowest gear on a smooth pavement. That is the mind watching television. Slow, constant speed on fine asphalt with nary a pothole to jolt it from time to time. The mind has become a watcher and what a dramatic shift from when it was a doer. When one's occupation has ended the mind will continue to beg for something to occupy it and when it is unemployed the mind experiences the same amount of futility that the unemployed worker's physical body suffers when it has nothing to do.

Retirement is supposed to be that pivotal shift, from earning a living to living off one's earnings from the first half of one's life. Not always possible, one might say, but those who read this will likely describe themselves to belong to the fairer category of the wealth divide - some perhaps fairer than others.  Whatever the case, we cannot be like butterflies. Another favorite of my idling mind. Let's again detour briefly for a bit.

The butterfly is technically two animals when I think of it. It begins as a caterpillar, banded or spotted, munching on leaves of a particular plant its mother chose for it to live in and live on. It will dine on those leaves until it had enough nutrients and body weight to transform itself into a pupa, by producing its own silk to make into a cocoon and drift to sleep once completely sealed. After a time, it comes out as an entirely different animal. And it can now fly after its wings are pumped stiff with its own insect blood. It has to be a different animal because now it eats nothing but nectar or juices from over-ripened fruit. It would fly from flower to flower looking like a piece of thin paper, weightless as smoke, being wafted up and down by undulating wind currents. There the mind wonders again at another wonder of nature that is one different animal half its life and completely another in the second half.

We cannot be like that. We continue as the same person post retirement as before. So why then should we suddenly be a different species? Why then should we set our mind to idle when it is technically not bound by physiology. Up to a point, of course. But the point I make here is that until such time, we ought not limit the wide expanse the mind can travel to and fro because retirement does not set limits to how far and wide we should continue to wonder. Wonder, for example, what you can now do with that garden in the backyard; can I merge Italian cooking with what I'm used to growing up in a Greek family; if it's not too late to learn another language, fashion jewelry  from arrow heads, if restoring old bicycles or hand tools will bring back memories of childhood, etc.

Wonder and then put into action what we desire and there you have just found continued employment for the mind. Keep it occupied and realize that the occupation of the mind is not only possible, it will actually offer us many possible ways to enjoy the second half of our lives. If we hope to have life's literal second half - the same number of years or as close as we can get to the number of years we worked - then the mind must continue to have an occupation.


Some readers of this blog - my way of occupying the mind - also knows of my woodworking blog. The latter is for the hands to take direction from the mind, what I fondly refer to as the retiree's version of hand-eye coordination - much slower than tennis or ping pong but probably more rewarding.

For the reader from where ever you are - often I am surprised that this blog is read in Indonesia, Finland, a lot from France and Poland lately, and other places - my woodworking blog merely says that I do walk the talk.

https://easywoodworking-tolerba.blogspot.com/

The latest project pictured below proves time and time again that as soon as I finished one made earlier I realized there is a better way to do it, as an encore. Occupying the mind comes that easy sometimes.

More details of construction of this phone cradle/charging stand are in the blog.

The Ghost in my Workshop

My first encounter with the ghost in my workshop, or rather the telltale signs of its presence, was just a few days ago. My woodworking shop is next to our garage and though separate it is connected by a door. There is another door that opens up to the back yard but it is always shut and locked. The last time I used that door was ten years ago. Essentially, I would get to the shop only by way of the garage. There is a sign on the door:

It was the little disturbances at first. The tools and material in the shop, as can be expected from a place of regular activity, are not that neatly arranged but I would notice if an object does not seem to be in its proper place or positioned unusually differently. It didn't bother me too much though I can't stop thinking about it. Then came one huge disturbance.

Two shop-made woodworking jigs, when not in use, are put up on brackets that jut out from against one of the walls, six and a half feet up from the floor. They are seldom used but they're there within reach when I need them. One of them weighs about twenty pounds so it takes an effort to get it up there and must be carefully eased down when I need them. Their weight and bulk notwithstanding, they stayed in place and I was confident of its safe placement for many years. For all that time before it happened those two pieces of table saw sleds stayed true to one component  of Newton's first law of motion on inertia - an object will remain still and unmoved until acted upon by an external force.

Then one morning, I went there after breakfast to resume working on the current project. The door was open. I keep it shut ordinarily even though the two garage doors when closed for the night keep everything secured at the workshop as well. When I turned the lights on, both sleds were on the floor, a clear plastic part shattered and one corner of the sled was badly mangled, pieces of plywood shredded from it. Both sleds had their own bracket support so I can't believe that both fell at the same time.  And the brackets were fine. I put them back up secured with a hook on elastic band (see photo below).

A rational person, and I was one that morning, should look to natural phenomenon to explain what could possibly have happened. Spring gusts had been blowing regularly lately. I wasn't sure if it did the night before but I surmised that such a burst of wind had blown in before the garage doors were closed and a vortex of sort went through the workshop, lifted the sleds off their perch. And that they came crashing down was not such an unreasonable explanation.

There was one problem though. Paper with drawings and sketches on top of the table saw was still there, even the saw dusts were undisturbed.  In other words, aside from the falling sled there was not much evidence of other wind blown items scattered about. But the wind gust effect was all I had. 

I left it at that. I didn't even tell my wife. The following morning I had some errands to do. When I got to my truck which is parked at the garage bay next to the workshop I heard the window-type air conditioner at the workshop running. I was certain that I turned it off the day before (via a remote controller that typically sits at one of the lower shelves above a power tool). I went in to turn it off and can't help but notice a few other things that were moved. Not by much but by a few inches or so away from where they were.  There was no question there was something going on. I went out to take a closer look somewhere else around the garage. Clearly a few pieces of wood, like long boards against a wall were disturbed, one was on the floor, a plastic sheeting that was on a low shelf was unfurled below, an empty can rolled away from where it should have stood.

By this time, the irrational part of my mind kicked in. It was one of those things when we helplessly succumbed to something we seldom give a second thought. If you've read some of my blog, I had incorporated a bit of science here, a bit of logic there, and their peripheral inclusions were indicative of rational thought processes, far from superstition or even hints of paranormal inclinations. But there I was thinking of the unnatural. One can't be too critical because people from all walks of life in one form or another believe on some kind of superstition. Athletes who are known to converse freely on statistical averages, the physics of baseball pitching, how the slice or topspin of tennis strokes can be used to vary the behavior of the tennis ball, the perfect arcs of the golf swing, the wind patterns and the "speed of the green" on a humid day, are also some of the most superstitious individuals. Fortune tellers still make a living, exorcism is still being practiced, coincidences are omens, bad luck is deemed a powerful force, a stroke of good luck a viable explanation that overshadows skill, the tooth fairy had adjusted for inflation and Santa will continue to modify children's behavior every last month of the year. 

So I let my mind take me to do the unthinkable. Late that afternoon I vacuumed most sawdust from the table saw top, emptied the dust canisters of all three dust collectors and, as best as I could, arranged the tools neatly and everything that can be moved I committed their positions to memory.  The idea was to see if the guest/ghost woodworker would come back that evening to actually do a project, perhaps foiled by the falling sled earlier and may decide to give it another go. If he/she rummaged through the wood pile I would know  and  I will detect any attempt at using the hand tools. The newly generated saw dust cannot be missed.

The following day, beyond even a penumbra of a doubt, I had my suspicion confirmed. The character of the night, the cause of my irrational fears manifested itself. Rather than explain it in prose I thought pictures will speak as loudly as the hurried thumping of my heart when at last I saw "it" with my own eyes.

The ghost got thirsty. It tore through one side of a pack of bottled water. Three bottles were partially drained and one was missing.

An empty plastic bottle laid silently next to an equally silent, immovable furry apparition.

And there it is - true to its character, "played dead" as a possum, even after the ruckus I made from removing the outer walls of lumber that were its hiding place. It continued the pretension for minutes.

When at last it knew it could no longer continue to play dead it started to move to the nearest exit - out the garage. The picture is a bit blurry because for a possum it moved relatively swiftly.

All through the process of eviction, the possum was not in anyway harmed or injured, except perhaps for the ignominy of being roused from a deep slumber. Nocturnal that they are, this possum was busily exploring the garage and my workshop.

How did it got to the sleds 6 feet up can only be speculated. They can climb because last year we had one that took up residence in our attic. We hired someone to set up traps to catch it.

The lesson here that I should have adhered to all along is the principle of Occam's razor. I've once or twice mentioned the priest of Occam, in my prior musings, after whom the principle is named after.

"Occam's razor (or Ockham's razor) is a principle from philosophy. Suppose there exist two explanations for an occurrence. In this case the simpler one is usually better. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation is. Occam's razor applies especially in the philosophy of science, but also more generally".

Or, given a choice, pick the simpler explanation. It is almost always likely the correct one. The possum was the simpler explanation versus the more tantalizing one - a ghostly wood worker.