Intellectual Manna from Heaven

I'm hit with another long weekend again, which I had originally thought to be just 3 days but it turned out to be 4, with the actual public holiday, Malaysia day falling on Tuesday, 16 of September. Monday is the extra holiday announced by the government. 

This long enforced hiatus from work could cause me some problems because I'm sure there's a huge backlog of issues to clear come Wednesday. Therefore I'm planning to do some work this weekend, like what I used to do. Weekends, at one time were my most productive days. I would park myself for the entire day at some cafe to tackle some difficult tasks.

Today, Saturday is my only personal time for blogging, reading and socialising. But this weekend, I don't have any social engagements. I will spend more time planning some future projects and maybe spend some time reading at a pub or cafe.

But first, let me embark on my weekly ramble in cyberspace. Every morning when I walk in the park, listening to some podcast or audiobook, I would occasionally get some insights about a particular subject; it could be something related to spirituality, science, culture or politics. The topics I wrote about here in my blog are often the result of such mini-eureka moments.

But let's talk about the subject of insight, in general. What exactly are insights and how do they occur? A moment of insight, is often a flash of realisation or intuition about a particular subject. This moment of realisation, I've likened it to a tumbling piece that falls from the top slotting in perfectly, with some deft manoeuvring into the gap of a row of  blocks in a Tetris game. I wrote about this 21 years ago (!) in a blog article here called Tetris of the Mind. That article was the result of an insight I had in Indonesia, which gave me a better understanding of the Chinese so-called Book of Changes: the I Ching. I have not fleshed out the details of this insight in any blog article yet--even after 2 decades!. Maybe someday I will. 

I realised that any insight I have completely alters your understanding of the world. It clears away confusions and often ties together isolated and disparate truths in your mind. You see the bigger picture and glimpse a grander vision of the universe.  It is the thrill of gaining insights that keep me going. Happiness is having new insights everyday!

When you have a lot of thoughts and concepts existing in isolation, they build obstacles in the mind, not unlike rows and rows of Tetris blocks with gaps in between. It's worst when they are buried deep down below: all the upper blocks need to be crushed before they can be accessed. But what great satisfaction one gets and we see multiple rows Tetris blocks disappear, when the right piece fall into place, kerrush! It is the metaphor of a eureka moment.

One of the things that I also like to do is to reread pages from my old university textbooks--it could be mathematics, electromagnetics or machine theory; I always gain a better understanding of the subject and would wonder why I never understood the concepts the same way then, when I was an undergraduate student.  But it also means that my mind has improved by leaps and bounds since then, through experience and the accumulation of many small insights. I guess I should judge my younger mind less harshly.

The more I read and listen and experience life, the more Tetris blocks of insights will fall into place, transforming the very substratum of my mind. And may they continue to tumble from the sky, like intellectual manna from heaven!