Ever since that doctor told me about his past self, I’ve always believed in my past me. I even think he’s cleverer than my future me. So when I sometimes make a wrong decision I don’t get annoyed; I remember that I made the decision myself and that it was considered and thought through (one thing is true, I always try to think through and consider my decisions).
You mustn’t be upset by the wrong decisions you make. You have to trust your past you. Of course your fifteen-year-old you could have made a mistake not taking that class, or your twenty-three-year-old you shouldn’t have gone on that trip, or your twenty-seven-year-old you shouldn’t have taken that job. But it was you who made those decisions and you must have dedicated some time to making them. Why do you think that you’ve now got the right to judge what he, your past you, decided to do? Accept who you are; don’t be afraid of being the person that your decisions have made you into.
Bad decisions crystallize; bad decisions, after a while, turn into good decisions. Accept this and you will be happy in your life and, above all, happy with yourself.
My doctor made three or four mistakes. I never threw these decisions in his face because I didn’t think that his mistakes came from a lack of experience or professionalism. In order to make mistakes, one has to take risks; the result is the least important part of the process.
I am sure that if we got your eight-year-old you, your fifteen-year-old you, and your thirty-year-old you together in a room, they would have different ideas about almost everything and they would be able to justify every decision they’d made. I love trusting my past me; I love living with the results of the decisions he made.
I have a huge scar over where my liver is from surgery. The operation wasn’t any use in the end because there was nothing wrong with my liver, but my doctor had thought I had cancer and that if I wasn’t operated on then I would die. This scar makes me feel very proud, makes me feel a lot of different feelings whenever I see it. Everything that provokes a surge of emotions is positive, extremely positive.
So:
1. Analyze any decisions you’ve made that you think were mistakes.
2. Remember who made them. If it was you, remember the reasons you had. Don’t believe that you are cleverer than your past you.
3. Respect your decisions and live with them.
4. Eighty percent of you is the consequence of decisions you’ve made. Love yourself for what you are; love yourself for what you have become.
5. Above all, acknowledge that you sometimes make mistakes. The 20 percent of you made out of mistakes is something you have to acknowledge and accept.
Like that doctor told me: Acknowledgment is the key word. You have to acknowledge yourself, acknowledge how you became what you are, and acknowledge whose fault it is.
They taught us in the hospital to accept that we can make mistakes. My doctor sometimes made mistakes and always accepted the blame. The world would run more smoothly if we all accepted that we make mistakes, that we have made mistakes, that we’re not perfect. Lots of people try to find excuses for their mistakes, look for someone else to blame, shift liability for deaths onto other people; they never know the joy of accepting responsibility. There is joy in the knowledge that you have made a wrong decision and that you acknowledge it.
I would love to see more trials where people admit their guilt, or drivers stopped for breaking the speed limit admit that they were going too fast.
We have to acknowledge that we make mistakes in order to see where the mistakes are and not make them anymore. Maybe lots of people are afraid of the punishment that will follow from this admission, but the punishment is the least important bit; the only important thing is to give your brain the correct information.
11
Find what you like looking at, then look at it
Wowwww!
—exclamation produced by the little Egghead Marc, the youngest one (as a silver car parked millimeters away from him)
There was a five-year-old kid who they brought into the hospital with cancer of the tibia. Sometimes he came with us to “the sun.” “The sun” was a place that they’d set up next to the parking lot; it always caught the sun and there was a basketball hoop.
It wasn’t easy to get permission to go to the sun. You had to behave very well. They normally let us be in the sun between five and seven. I loved going out of the hospital to go to the sun. It made me feel great, like going on a trip to New York: The contrast was huge. We stayed out for those two hours taking the sun; we got tanned.
Sometimes the little guy came with us. But he didn’t lie down to take the sun like the rest of us. He stayed standing up, staring at the parking cars. If people parked well, he went crazy; his eyes got as big as saucers; he smiled and laughed and clapped like mad. If they took a long time parking or had to flail around a lot, he went crazy the other way; he got angry and almost ended up kicking the car.
I don’t know where this passion for cars came from, but as time went on we stopped tanning ourselves and just stared at him. He was worth watching. He was passionate, intelligent, observant; he was a mystery to us.
I think that he didn’t look just at cars; he looked at movement, looked at time, turns, elegance. This is what made him crazy: shapes, the energy in the turns, the sweetness of a perfect piece of parking.
A few months later they detected that the cancer had metastasized in both his lungs. That day we went down to the sun together. He didn’t have permission but we managed to smuggle him out with a false permission slip that another patient had left.
I knew that he liked looking at the cars. We spent almost two hours there in the sun, watching them park. When we were heading back to the hospital I asked him: “Why do you like looking at cars so much, Marc?” He looked at me and asked: “Why do you all like looking at the sun so much?” I said that it wasn’t so much that we looked at the sun but that the sun gave us … it was nice … that … The truth is I didn’t know why we looked at the sun.
Not to judge: That’s the important lesson that kid taught me that day. He looked at cars and I looked at the sun. I kept quiet and he went crazy about what he saw. I’m sure that his cars gave him as much as the sun gave me: color, health, happiness. I imagine that watching people park cars gives you some sort of pleasure as well. The important thing isn’t what you look at, but what you get out of looking.
I got very angry that day, cried so much that night.… I didn’t want that kid to die in a couple of months. The way that boy looked at things had to survive, had to get him as far as running countries, leading men. There was something in his passion that dazzled me. I don’t know what became of him. So I hope that wherever he is he’s still looking at things with the same passion.
I never judged anyone again. I just enjoy other people’s passions. I have friends who like looking at birds, looking at walls, looking at the waveforms emitted by cellphones.
Find what you like looking at and look at it.
12
Start counting at six
Change your brain!
—idea given me by a neurologist in blue pajamas just before they gave me a CAT scan
They took three CAT scans of my brain. You have to stay very still. I tried not to think about anything personal; I was scared that the machine would print it. I knew that the machines didn’t print these things out, but I felt that everything was being recorded, so I didn’t think about anything.
One summer, the summer of the World Cup when Gary Lineker was the star, I spent three hours waiting in the hospital and the only thing that I could think of was that I was missing one of the semifinals. I was sure that when they did the CAT scan they’d see Lineker and his goals and the whole stadium going wild.
There was a man there who looked at me. He was an older man with little eyes. He was wearing blue pajamas like me. We started to talk to each other: “They’re taking ages. Is it for a CAT scan?” It’s that sort of question that brings people together in waiting rooms.
We went to sit next to each other. Neither of us went to where the other one was but we both went to a third place. He told me he was a neurologist. The conversation we had was about the brain, the famous 10 percent of the brain that we use. This is something that has always bothered me; I want our successors to be able to use 30 or 40 percent. In the end we’ll go down in history as the guys who used only 10 percent, the ones with the sticks and the rocks and the 10 percent, that’s those guys, over there. We’ve come a long way, but for the people of the thirtieth century we’ll be primitives.
This neurologist told me that in order to use more of the brain all we have to do is change our brain.
If you say the words change and brain to a fifteen-year-old boy, then you’ll get his attention pronto. “How can you do it? I want to change my brain.”
He spoke to me about numbers. It was a simple example. He showed me four objects: In this case it was four magazines. He asked me to count them. I said that there were four of them. He asked me: “Did you need to think?” I said no, that it was easy. I started to wonder if he really was a neurologist; he was more like a patient from Floor 8 (Psychiatry). He showed me five magazines and asked me to count them. Suddenly I realized that my brain had started to work. I was counting: I couldn’t do it without counting. He smiled at me, and his eyes grew even narrower: “You’re counting, right?” I looked at him in amazement.
He explained to me that when you get to five, our 10 percent of the brain starts to count. The way to exercise it is to try to make it start counting at six, and then at seven. In this way we force it to increase its capacity, so more neurons fire up when we use our brain. We change it a little bit at a time, so that it isn’t so weak, so that we notice it start working.
I wanted more. He spoke to me about when you see nine people and have the sensation of a group. Up to eight, you don’t think of them as a group, but when you hit nine your brain identifies them as a little crowd. Another way to change your brain: Make it start seeing a crowd when you hit fifteen, or even twenty.
I said it was like changing the factory settings of something. Was it possible? He told me that we were talking about a brain, that it didn’t have factory settings and that all changes were possible.
They called me for the CAT scan. I knew that when I came out I wouldn’t find him again. This happened a lot in the hospital: You’d go away for a minute and a person you’d made a connection with would have disappeared.
As I was leaving I shouted to him: “I’m going to use fifteen percent of my brain! Twenty percent!” He smiled at me. A moment before they shut the door to the room where they were going to test me I noticed sadness, a huge sadness flooding from him. I don’t know what it was, but it made me tremble; this man radiated something.
They shut me into the CAT scanner and asked me not to move. I remember that this was the first day I started to change my brain. Every time it tells me something is definite I reject it and change what my brain thinks is the correct answer. I am in dialogue with my brain and have changed its factory settings.
Over time I have realized that this man was not sad but was instead very happy. My brain thought that his lost gaze, his stare, radiated sadness. That was the factory setting. But it was actually happiness; he was happy to hear a kid of fifteen shout out the phrase that he most believed in.
Does this discovery help in our daily life? It’s really useful. You could put it this way: Don’t obey your first thoughts blindly. Consider well what it is that you are thinking. Look for things; don’t just be happy with your first thought.
It is possible to change your brain. I have trained myself to start counting at six; maybe it doesn’t seem like much, but I’m very proud.
So, don’t believe anything that comes straight from the factory. Think about it carefully and your life will improve.
13
The search for the south and the north
Dreams are the north for everyone; if they come true then you’ve got to head south.
—an intensive care nurse who stroked my hair as I realized that I only had one lung
This is a piece of advice that speaks for itself.
I don’t want to spend a lot of time on something that’s so obvious.
Where did I hear it? In the intensive care unit. I’d just come out of the lung operation and I had lost lung capacity—one of my lungs was missing. What did they do with it? I’ve always asked myself that.
A nurse came up and looked at me. She stroked my hair. I liked it a lot. Through the mask I tried to thank her for her kindness, but I’m sure that my face was made stupid by the anesthetic and I must have said just the opposite.
She was talking to another nurse who was stroking the big toe on the only foot I had left. I swear I’m not making it up. It was a bit sexy, but it was great to wake up to such kindness after losing a lung.
The younger girl said to the older one: “Dreams are the north for everyone; if they come true then you’ve got to head south.”
That sentence fascinated me so much! I almost couldn’t breathe.… Luckily I was on a respirator so I didn’t have to worry about it.
They left, and I thought: How much north have I got left to travel? How much south will I conquer once my dreams have come true?
In my life outside the hospital I’ve put this into practice. Sometimes, if you’re lucky enough for your dreams to come true, you’ll see how you reach the north. I envisage the north of my life, and then I look for another dream and tell myself: “This must be in the south.”
I know, I was sedated and two nurses were stroking me. Should I trust so much in a piece of advice obviously influenced by external circumstances? The answer is yes; in fact, maybe I should obey it all the more because it touched me so deeply.
North and south. Nothing more. Look for the north; look for the south. Don’t stop traveling between them.
14
Listen to yourself when you’re angry
My father didn’t have a car but we went to the car pound every Saturday to shout at the guard. It’s fun.
—Jordi, an Egghead whose hair never fell out. Strange kid.
Sometimes you’ve got to let it all out. It’s a law of life. Shout three or four times into the air. Either that or you’ll explode.
There was an Egghead in the hospital who told us that he sometimes went with his father to the car pound; his father would shout at the duty officer there. He’d say that they should be ashamed of themselves, that they wanted to make him pay 120 euros; he got angry and shouted to the heavens. After ten minutes or so they’d head off. The police had never taken his dad’s car; it was just that the dad had found a place where he could go to let off steam. The wrong place? Well, of course the poor duty officer didn’t deserve that kind of explosion of anger directed at him. Sometimes I think about those police officers, or the people who deal with lost luggage at an airport. Where do they go to let off steam? How can they want to go to work each morning?
I think that the father of Jordi the Egghead (an Egghead with hair—weird, weird) went to the wrong place: There must be easier ways to blow off some steam. In the hospital we sometimes shouted at a tape recorder. It was the idea of one of the cancer residents who came to see us every Saturday.
He was young and wanted to change the world. Now he’s the head of the department and the armor plating that most doctors end up wearing has made him forget all that. But I’m here to remind him about it. It’s good when people remind you of the worthwhile things you’ve done.
The resident brought a tape recorder and we took turns letting it rip. We said everything that really upset us. There were some of us who found a lot to shout about. For instance, it’s terrible when you think they’re going to give you a pass for the weekend and they end up not giving it to you. We shouted; we got rid of everything that was annoying us and getting us down. Other people said nothing; they just looked at you.
Then the resident made us listen to the recording. It was always a
fascinating moment: to hear yourself shouting, to hear yourself angry, sounding like a madman, paranoid. Suddenly, everything that had seemed to make sense, that you would have defended a second ago, seemed baseless. It was as if your anger dissipated with the echo of your rage.
The echo of rage has this power: the power to minimize your anger, the power to show you how ridiculous it is to shout and throw your toys out of the stroller.
Who better than you to put up with all your shouting? Try it, you’ll feel better; and little by little you’ll stop shouting, stop getting annoyed, and, above all, you won’t shout at other people. You’ll see how ridiculous you are when you get like that.
15
Positive wanking
You are who you really are after a wank.
—a physiotherapist who didn’t manage to give me bigger quadriceps but who was a funny guy nonetheless
I’m very much in favor of wanking. A few years ago I wrote a play called Wank Club. My passion for wanking comes from the bad press that it gets. People always talk about wanking a bit disrespectfully, as a joke, as if it were something from the second division.
I’m extremely interested in wanking, especially what people hide behind it. Sometimes it’s unrecognized passion, sometimes it’s excessive love, sometimes it’s sex, sometimes shame, sometimes hidden desires. Wanking always tells you more about a person than all the personal details you ask them.
“You are who you really are after a wank.” A physiotherapist told me this. He explained that after having a wank all that is left is what is really you. In those two or three minutes after masturbating the essence of who you really are appears.
He also said: “A wank is like an externalized suicide. It’s like killing yourself from the outside.” He was a very tall man, nearly seven feet tall, and he spoke about wanking like other people talk about soccer or the movies. He spoke about it with such passion that it was impossible not to listen to him. I really like discovering what someone’s passion is; passion is what interests me the most.
The Yellow World Page 5