Mind of my Stroked Brain

What I have observed/ learnt over the last 3+ years, is that the body is extremely resilient. It has many many safety nets and emergency mechanisms to stop it from perishing unnaturally. It needs way more external interference or significant internal damage to give up. But I have assumed that the mind is pretty finicky. It can make us do voluntary damage to the body and cause it to perish if it wanted to. Or be cheerful and make the body healthy and buoyant. In the past, I have felt both. Felt like ending it - but unable to. Happy and still no difference to the body. I have written in the past about finding meaning. Finding a purpose, etc. However, I have found nothing. A few years ago, I used to be a compulsive planner. I used to have a plan for life and even a spreadsheet to boot. Didn't work that way did it. I don't have anything to look forward to. It's not that I don't feel happy or sad or things like that. I feel all of it - more than necessary sometimes. But I am

Everyday I stand for sometime with the standing frame.  When my physiotherapist comes, he makes me walk a bit with the frame. Some days he puts my leg in a knee brace (so it doesn't buckle), the ankle in a AFO brace (so it is supported and does not twist) and he makes me do the same walk. He holds me by the side, my left arm around his neck, right arm in a sling around my neck and lifts my right hip every other stride so I can try and drag the right foot forward a little. It is anyway impossible if the hip is not lifted by him. I wonder everytime, what is that bloody leg made out of. Concrete, iron, something heavier - gold maybe.  Some days, we get even more adventurous. He makes me stand, right leg fully braced up and he lets go. His both hands few centimetres away and the nurses close by , waiting for the catch. Brief periods - to see if the body can balance. Earlier, before the stroke, standing was taken for granted. There was millions of years of evolution supporting the body.

Most of the time, when we have to make a decision/ choice, we do a quick mental calculation. Different parameters are taken into account, weightage assigned and a weighted score is calculated to help us make the decision. Of course none of it is done mathematically, but that is basically what happens in various other terms in the mind. If we interrogate the mind later - the constituents will come out. But sometimes, against this mental mathematics, we want to do something else. We often say we listened to the heart or the gut or plainly - "it just feels right" What is this "feeling"? I think it has nothing to do with the "heart" or "gut" or any other organs. They don't speak to us. I think it is our subconscious mind telling our consciousness mind what to do. Very likely, it is doing a similar computation taking into factor many earlier experiences and other's experiences, etc. Since we can't quiz the subconscious mind using our consc

In recent times, I have encountered the phrase "running around like headless chicken" and each time I have thought, surely whoever coined that phrase had no idea - the headless chicken is not running anywhere, period. It got me thinking on another thing - "muscle memory". Something I have heard so many times. And have taken for granted a lot. Every indication now was contrary to that understanding. If my muscles, for all their repetitions of so many things had done , had an iota of memory, something would have moved. Sure, they have memory. Every cell has dna which is a record or memory of the entire body. But it is purely biological. Unconscious. There was no conscious memory. Here is my thinking: We can regularly exercise and feed it nutritional food. But we can only make muscles strong, flexible, agile, etc. But memory, no way. Without the brain or mind more specifically, they are nothing. When Neeraj Chopra threw the Javelin, he didn't know the angle, he did