It has been a strange week for news that has my brain a-thinkin’. It started on NPR last Sunday during my favorite show This American Life with a story about a mother’s new realization of her child’s diagnosis with Downs Syndrome. She took her toddler to see a stage version of Sesame Street and saw an adult afflicted with the disease and realized that her child will still be excited about Elmo in 10, 20 years when all of his peers will have moved on to other, older things. So, the smarter you are, the less excited you are. Is the smartest person in the world also the dullest by implication?
Then I heard a story about a woman who had a stroke which was preceded by a surreal experience that morning. She awoke and jumped on her exercise machine. Suddenly she looked down and her hands appeared to her as primitive tools. She felt a disconnect with her body as if it did not belong to her. Primitive Tools. This phrase has reverberated in my brain since that moment. She was filled with euphoria and I could relate in some faraway part of myself, my childhood maybe, when I inhabited my body as some great adventure or toy or…gift. The future and past where absent and so she was completely disconnected from rational thought; she was completely in the moment. It seems to imply a consciousness is something that is held down by the constraints of time, the laws of nature.
I have oftened wondered it the “mentally handicapped” don’t know some grand secret and are unafraid to live a life unfettered by social constraints. What if?
Tags: consciousness, Downs Syndrome, Elmo, euphoria, existential, news, NPR, Sesame Street, stroke, This American Life, tools
August 1, 2008 at 2:30 pm |
[...] – bookmarked by 4 members originally found by cavemanf16 on July 17, 2008 NPR gets Existential http://southernfluff.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/the-national-enquirer-on-npr-and-in-the-new-yorker/ [...]