Two months before I’d make another attempt, I had read some article and my comprehension of it had been poor. I’d felt as though the writer was speaking way over my head. It had all seemed so complicated, with economic jargon and foreign government policies strewn all over it.
But I read the same article again recently, and I understood it so well that I could give a talk on it with ease, as though the content was originally mine all along. This was strange to me — my assimilation is usually superb at the first read, so much that the only time I may have to read stuff twice is when I’m really keen on killing a medical exam. So, I thought really hard about it, asking myself what had changed. It wasn’t that my IQ had taken a leap in just 2 months, nor had I gotten more vast in the knowledge of the concerned field.
The only thing that had changed was my sudden interest in the writer, such that I had now spent hours listening to him talk on other subjects. Perhaps this came with a familiarity that helped demystify his work in some ways. Perhaps a rekindled global consciousness aided me in better contextualising his concepts. Perhaps it was just repeated exposure. It’s hard to tell, really, which further lends credence to the wondrousness of the human mind.
As a medical student, I often tell people that, having had a peek at human anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and pathology — which I consider all impressive, no doubt — the thing I find most remarkable, most fascinating, about humans isn’t our body; it is, in fact, our mind. We feed and take good care of our body every day, but how much, how often, do we feed and take good care of our mind?
~~~ His Royal Awesomeness, L.S
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