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.
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.
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