Just finished reading a great book called
My Stroke of Insight by a woman named Jill Bolte Taylor. I first heard of this lady from my sister when she recommended I look at a blog posting by John Mayer with you tube footage of a woman talking about her experience surviving a stroke. Then just a couple of weeks ago I was listening to NPR at work and Terry Gross, the host of one of my favorite NPR programs, Fresh Air was interviewing the same woman. I told my boss about the program and she enjoyed it so much that she went out and bought Ms. Taylor's book. When she finished reading she passed it along to me.
Taylor gave some really great insight into the way our brains work. Although I do not have any in depth understanding our our brains, after finishing this book I realize just how much I take for granted the amazing functions that my body and brain carry out each day, each hour, each second. After reading about Taylor's experience, I can't help but feel incredibly lucky to function as normally as I do each day....I can express myself with language, I can read, I can understand other's attempts to communicate, I can call on the thousands of files in my brains to make sense of the world around me.
In addition to a detailed walk through of her recollection of her experience during her stroke, Taylor offers some great life advice at the end of the book---the lessons that she has learned as a result of her experience. She talks about choosing everyday the way that she will react to the things that happen to her. She talks about choosing emotions of compassion and gratitude over emotions of anger and general unhappiness.
I kind of consider myself to be on an ongoing quest for happiness and fulfillment and so much of what Taylor had to say resonated with my efforts to develop an inner peace in my life. Not that I am unhappy with my life right now, but I do feel as though I still take a lot for granted and have a lot to learn in shifting my life attitudes to fully appreciate all the beauty that surrounds me every day.
