Backpack of the Mind

Heyo everyone, this weeks lesson is going to be about retaining certain information and using it to prepare yourself for what the future may hold.

Every time I leave my household for any reasons besides school and Kung Fu, I bring along a small green hiking backpack. This is the backpack I use for everything: spending the night at a friends, going for a hike, going to work, etc. Every time I go somewhere, I bring the backpack. For most, bringing a backpack places would seem practical. It’s an efficient way to hold a change of clothes, a water bottle, valuables, etc. And for the same people, if they brought a backpack somewhere, it would hold only what would seem relevant to them for that exact situation. And yet I like to think my backpack is a bit different. There are things in my backpack that never get removed unless it’s for immediate use, and after it’s been used, it goes back into the bag. These items include a 50ft spoil of rope, a pocket knife, a flashlight, some duck tape and electrical tape, and a change of socks (because wet socks are the worst). The thing about these objects is that not all of them were put in the bag all at once. Overtime, I add a new haul of items for a new occasion, and when I go to clear them out for the next day, I look at an object and think “yeah, I may need these later” and back into the bag it goes.

The few objects I keep in the bag are all practical tools if you ever find yourself in a pinch. They all serve a multitude of purposes (even the socks) and can prove to be very useful in a situation where you never would have thought it would have even been applicable. With that, I want to now use my bag as a comparison to the human mind. Just like how for every time I go out I’ll add a few objects with a designate purpose to what I plan on doing, during every second our brain retrieves a certain amount of information relevant to that second. And the same way I empty my bag after my day is over to make room for the new stuff coming up, our brain will empty all that little information it doesn’t need anymore to make room for the next second. And just like how my bag has a few items which are considered practical and reasonable to carry around, our brains will deem some lessons or information practical and reasonable to retain.

I like to think of my brain now as something similar to my bag. There will always be things going in and things going out. Just like how a bag cannot carry everything, a brain can’t hold everything. Yet every once in a while something is important enough to get placed in the bag and in the mind for a long time. These pieces of information and knowledge don’t always stick automatically and it’s up to us to make sure we take it all in properly. Having a large array of knowledge and experience to be able to fall back on is something that helps us get ready for what’s to come in the future. Right now, preparing for grading feels like packing for a big trip. You’re trying to fit as much as you can into your bag, and it doesn’t seem like it will all fit. Lucky for us, we don’t need to get a bigger bag to fit more things when it comes to our minds. We just need to practice more frequently and wisely. By doing so, it’s easy to add more and more effective tools to the backpack of the mind, which means when a time comes where you need to know something, you know it.