There is a rare disease, of which the patient would look at his mother and say “this woman looks exactly like my mother, but I am sure she’s NOT.” Freud’s believers concluded that this was a denial of a man’s sexual desire of his mother: because he couldn’t admit that he was sexually attracted to his mother, he denied the fact that this woman was actually his mother. However, you can imagine how weird it was when a patient claimed that his pet dog PiPi was not actually his PiPi but some other dog looked exactly like PiPi.

With better technology and improved brain science, doctors now understand that this disease is caused by the damage of the link between the vision section and the emotion section within the brain. The patient sees his mother, and rationally recognizes this woman looks exactly like his mother. However, the patient doesn’t feel the emotional warmth he expects from his mother while looking at this woman due to the disconnection between the two parts of the brain, and thus he draws the conclusion based on his emotional decision – “she is NOT my mother” – even though it is contradictory to his rational recognition – “she looks exactly the same as my mother”.

However, during treatment, by recognizing this fact, the patient would start to live a normal life with his mother in some time. He just has to overcome his lack of emotional attachment and acknowledge this woman who looks exactly his mother is actually his mother.

This case implies:
1. When not aware, we follow our subconscious and emotional conclusion, even it is opposite to the rational one.
2. When acknowledged, we are able to overcome the subconscious impulse to adjust our behavior and act according to our rational judgment.

The war between our conscious mind and subconscious impulse never stops, and the battle field is within our fragile brain. The more we know about it, the less painful we are.

To learn more about our mind, please refer to the works of Dr. Vilayan Ramachandran at University of California San Diego.

This is NOT a political statement, nor a confession on personal preference. This is about philosophy.

“I shouldn’t have expected this!”
“Your expectation is unrealistic / gives me too much pressure.”

If you have said/heard the above statement, you probably have thought about the “expectation issues”, and you are with me.

As we all know, our left brain controls the right side of our body and our right brain controls the left side. Therefore, if we want to practice any one of our brain more, we should exercise the opposite part of the body.

Current brain studies show that the left brain is in charge of remembering our pass and projecting our future, and our right brain is to receive and process the current surrounding. For example, when you are handed a glass of wine, your eyes see the crystal red color and liquid shape, your nose smell the intoxicating sense, and all the signals are sent to your right brain, which collects them and put them together. Then the information is transferred to the left brain, which draws conclusion based on your previous experience – this thing tastes good and makes you happy – and projects what might happen in the future, in other words, generates expectation – I will be happier after drinking this.

If your right brain is more active than the left one, you focus on the current surrounding more: you enjoy the moment. If our left brain is more active, you pay more attention to the past and/or the future: you “think” too much.

Therefore, if you have “expectation problems”, you want to make your right brain, which looks at the present, more active, and thus should use your left hand more.

So, I use mouse and chop-sticks with my left hand now.