Improvement

"Your self does not end where you flesh ends, but suffuses and blends with the world, including other beings. Moreover this annexed personal space is not static. It is elastic. It morphs every time you put on or take off your clothes, wear skis or scuba gear, or wield any tool. When you eat with a knife or a fork, your peripersonal space grows to envelop them. Brain cells that normally represent space no farther out than your fingertips expand their fields of awareness along the length of each utensil, making them part of you."  - The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, by Sandra Blakeslee & Matthew Blakeslee

 I'm currently reading through the book Think Smart: A Neuroscientist's Prescription for Improving Your Brain's Performance, written by Richard Restak, M.D. Within the crisp pages and embedded in the third chapter, "Specific Steps for Enhancing Your Brain's Performance," is a section on enhancing your body's innate peripersonal space (or PPS). PPS is the "force field" around our body's skin that can extend our body's boundaries. This is what helps us to navigate our bodies through crowded sidewalks without bumping in to other people. When we manipulate other objects, such as our vehicles, our PPS includes them, making it easier to park in tight spaces. Musicians extend their PPS to their instruments when they're playing them.

What I find very interesting is when we extend that PPS to include other people. Our close friends, our relatives, our partners, and even our pets become a part of us, an extension of who we are and how we perceive their existence. It's no wonder that we grieve the way we do when a person who is close to us is injured, ill, or, worse, perishes. Though we may care about the person in general and objectively find value in their being alive, we also tend to focus on them as being a part of ourselves. When the other is harmed, we are, in effect, harmed as well. When the other is ill, we are ill. When the other dies, a part of us dies along with them. We are not separate from the other people in our lives. We aren't even separate from the other people and things in the world, despite our not being aware of their existence. We all share something and are in some ways connected. When they are closer to our hearts and our bodies, we are simply more aware of them as being an extension of ourselves.

For the longest time, I've believed myself to be misanthropic, yet despite this notion, I continually fell in love with people. Now I realize that I was never particularly misanthropic, but that I was unhappy with some parts of myself, and it was only when other people revealed those parts to me that I disliked them. Being more honest and at peace with myself has allowed me to be more honest and at peace with other people. It's still allowing me to find something beautiful in everyone and to appreciate their existence more so than before. They're all a part of me, and I think that's great. I'm a part of them, and I think that's even better.