Monday, 04 September 2006 @ 4:15pm.
I don’t know what prompted it, but I was thinking about “resilience” today. Merriam-Webster Online defines “resilience” as “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” The mind and heart can do some amazing things, and in the face of adversity - manmade or natural - people can be quite strong, especially here in Indonesia. Somehow despite various problems with institutions, disasters, health, etc., people manage to survive and in some cases eventually thrive. I wonder where the source of such resilience comes from… Is it religion? Family? Individual personalities? Cultural? Or that there is no other choice but to move on? Maybe it has something to do with a survival mechanism that is wired into our brains?
On a somewhat different note, I’m not a scientist, so am perhaps more easily fascinated by what the mind is capable of. Sometimes the brain is quite mysterious to me, so I was pretty impressed to read the following:
The Human Mind
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!
(taken from http://www.personalitytest.net/funtest/humanmind.htm)
