I’m on vacation on Cape Cod this week, the first relaxed visit I’ve had here in 35 years. My cell phone died Monday and I scoured the web looking for a store where I could replace it. The only one on the cape is in Hyannis, so I got in the car this morning and set out.
The radio came on with the engine, it sounded like someone giving a campaign speech. I paid more attention to backing around some pine trees than to what was broadcast and I was driving down the road before I realized Ted Kennedy was being eulogized.
I turned the car around and headed back to the cottage. No point going to Hyannis today.
Later, I sat under the pines with a book, breathing the salt air, watching the sunlight play on the surface of a freshwater pond, but Sen. Kennedy kept coming into my mind. I am, after all, in his neighborhood.
He’d been in the upper house of Congress since I was two and a half years old and however one remembers the man, he was a fixed star in the political firmament, his position as unvarying as Sirius. He was the least gifted and most burdened political Kennedy of his generation, but for all his faults, he was dedicated to public service in a way I doubt we shall ever see again.
I hope he finds the repose that always seemed to elude him in life.
Peek-a-Boo!
Have you played Peek-a-Boo? Lately? I’ve recently come to have a greater appreciation for the game. I was at a seminar on early childhood development and the presenter was discussing the value of Peek-a-Boo. (BTW, contrary to the old saying, there IS a school for learning to be a parent. I attend. I even have a license to parent. Scary, huh?)
The adult covers her or his face and suddenly uncovers. “Peek-a-boo!” The baby laughs, the adult covers up and the process repeats. Both players seem to enjoy the game immensely.
What’s going on below the surface is that the baby is learning the notion of permanence. At first, the game seems to involve an adult appearing from nowhere, over and over. Eventually, the child learns that the adult has been there the whole time, covering up and uncovering. Peek-a-Boo!
Being able to grasp the concept of permanence; that the adult – or anything else for that matter – continues to exist when out of sight, is a function of the higher brain. The notion that the only things that exist are those we can see is a function of the limbic brain, sometimes called the reptile brain or the animal brain. The shift in consciousness from the limbic to the higher brain is what separates us from animals – or not.
Continue reading »