Rebel Minds: The Treasure of Inattention

Although shaped through our life history, people we bring with us, from birth, certain characteristics that accompany us throughout our entire journey. Our brain, accompanied by our nervous system, comes into this world with a unique way of perceiving reality, an individual way of feeling sounds, light, texture, taste and smell and a specific way of processing and integrating them to become a representation of the environment and the place of each one in the same.

There are brains specially equipped to hear and perceive music, others to create shapes and figures in the space, some with a special ability to retain and elaborate language or to imagine through numbers. There are also analytical brains prepared to know a tree in depth and other more abstract ones with the capacity to see and understand a forest.

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Neuroscience and society

To this day, neuroscience has already taught us that just like songs, our brain has a base oscillation rhythm

, in each of the different individuals and with different variation depending on the emotional state. We have brains that oscillate slowly and tend more towards creativity, imagination, reverie; and others that oscillate faster and are more oriented to the environment, the execution or the analysis of what they perceive.

The socioeconomic system in which we live likes these seconds, since their attention, oriented outwards, is easier to capture and direct towards work and productivity, an issue that keeps the system running.

The first, the most creative, look inward, into the inner world, where they create, reflect and generate and for this reason, they are more difficult to “catch”, since they tend to escape from the environment or live it together without focusing on anything for a long time.

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Different virtues for different brains

Contemplating the present, I will state the obvious: we cannot ask the same of people with a brain oriented towards execution as those with a brain oriented towards creativity, and lo and behold the source of suffering of many people who come to us as therapists weekly to consultations.

Creative brains are great when they are in a regulated mood, that is, inspired, since they are able to understand the whole of what they see and understand aspects that an analytical brain does not may. On the contrary, we cannot ask these brains for great feats in terms of sustained attention or constancy in execution, since their functionality is closely linked to their emotional world that experiences life in a more intense and rich way than analytical brains, which freed from intense emotionality, can fix their attention in a more intense way. regular.

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Paddling against the current

As I say, creative, emotional, perceptive and also inattentive people are at a disadvantage in a world that loves them and has raised them to be consistent, productive, and contained in their emotional expression.

They are men and women who were boys and girls to whom it was repeated many times throughout their lives. childhood that they couldn't cry when they were sad, scream when they were afraid, or jump when they were happy.

People who have been denied in many cases the use of an emotional compass so fine-tuned and powerful that they have ended up being afraid of it, since the environment has shown it that way, getting them to contain it, deny it, hide it or separate it from their experience, so as not to connect with the emotional overflow that could cause them when they were smaller human beings and with fewer resources to manage their world internal.

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theory vs reality

At this point I think it will be good to highlight the theoretical nature of all this. "Purity" is something that does not exist when we talk about brain typologies. It would be a mistake to pigeonhole the tremendous richness, complexity, and flexible development of a human brain. throughout life in a sealed compartment. We are all a kind of hybrid in these dimensions and we are dominated by a tendency or another, which not only depends on our genetic load, but also and to a large extent on our history of lifetime.

Although we must all take charge of the skills we need to develop a life project that makes sense for each one of us, we also it is essential that we know what basis we have in order to develop our virtues and be soft and love each other with our most fragile points.

Author: Arturo Lecumberri Martínez.