My grandfather used to say, "Use it or lose it," referring to keeping your brain active. My favorite fictional character, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, relies upon his "little grey cells" to help solve a mystery, and I have a habit of saying that I'm putting my "little grey cells to work." In our family, we had a longstanding tradition of challenging thought through debate and reporting on current events from daily newspapers or publications like Time Magazine, which I didn't really fully appreciate until I had my own kids.
I admire my 80-year-old mother for her continual thirst for knowledge and am grateful she passed along her enjoyment for crossword puzzles and, more recently, sudoku. She announced to me the other day that she wants to learn French so that she could hold conversations with me - I thought that was hilarious, since I'm so badly out of practice (mine is a multi-lingual family, but I'm the only one who studied the language). At my daughter-in-law's birthday dinner, several of us decided we're going to learn Portuguese, since she speaks it.
Judging by how mentally alert my grandfather was, and my mother still is, keeping the little grey cells challenged is a very good thing.
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My grandfather used to say, "Use it or lose it," referring to keeping your brain active. My favorite fictional character, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, relies upon his "little grey cells" to help solve a mystery, and I have a habit of saying that I'm putting my "little grey cells to work." In our family, we had a longstanding tradition of challenging thought through debate and reporting on current events from daily newspapers or publications like Time Magazine, which I didn't really fully appreciate until I had my own kids.
I admire my 80-year-old mother for her continual thirst for knowledge and am grateful she passed along her enjoyment for crossword puzzles and, more recently, sudoku. She announced to me the other day that she wants to learn French so that she could hold conversations with me - I thought that was hilarious, since I'm so badly out of practice (mine is a multi-lingual family, but I'm the only one who studied the language). At my daughter-in-law's birthday dinner, several of us decided we're going to learn Portuguese, since she speaks it.
Judging by how mentally alert my grandfather was, and my mother still is, keeping the little grey cells challenged is a very good thing.
September 10, 2009 - 7:54pmThis Comment
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