When we look back, some of our childhood reactions seem so stupid. That crush on a friend at school and thinking about that crush for hours, that competition with friends to come first in the class, grief when another student comes first and we feel that he has been favoured by the teachers, the anxiety about scoring well in the examination, worry about the career, what will happen in future, will we be able to get a job, the apprehensions about a life partner, how will we live without friends, and so on. We had thousands of apprehensions and worries, and when we recall them, we just laugh at ourselves and our immaturity. What if our present worries and anxieties are also equally laughable? During childhood, all the worries appeared very real. But as we gained exposure, most of those became meaningless. Maybe, as we get more exposure, our present worries will also become meaningless. But how do we know? Health crises, office politics, job uncertainty, uncertainty about the future of th...
A newborn child, until around 6 months of age, cannot talk or walk. Then magic unfolds. The child learns to say maa or paa. He starts rolling, and soon starts crawling. Where does he get these skills? Do the parents train him to walk and talk? No. He picks them up on his own. In the language of neurology, his brain mirrors what he sees, and that's how his brain picks up the language, and he starts talking. These mirror neurons are quite magical, and they help us understand how to live in society. We learn so many responses naturally through these mirror neurons. We learn how to communicate, how to live in a society, how to take care of our bodies, how to behave in relationships and many more such things. Once we mirror something, that becomes part of "me". A child picks Hindi, for example, while being in Delhi, and then he goes to China. What will be his first reaction? He will feel that Chinese is a foreign language, but for him, when he was 6 months old, even Hindi was ...