Kay:

Hey there Questers, and welcome back! It’s Tuesday, January 26th and this is episode 277. We have our favorite German scientist coming at you today, Mr. Albert Einstein and he says, “The mind that opens up to a new idea never returns to its original size.”

Shi:

That’s hinting here at the unlimited potential of humans and humanity here. That fact that we really do have an unknown limit to our capacity of what we can create and what we can imagine. One of the key areas to growth is this flexibility (AKA: having an open mind), and it sounds a lot easier than it actually is in practice.

Kay:

Now, there is an episode of Futurama, the animated hit adult TV show in which they watch some things that happen, potential futures that could unfold in their lives, and at the end of each episode, the announcer guy, (I just love these little mini-episodes within the episode) says, “Now that you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.” This is really true when it comes to new things that you learn, new perspectives that you gain, or maybe some things that open up your mind.

Shi:

It’s always nice to find something and see a new perspective, but if you aren’t open to it, you’ll find the reasons wrong with it or you will be repulsed by the idea of it because it threatens your certainty about the world around you and your beliefs of that world. So, especially as we age too, we have experiences that might push us in the direction of wanting to close or of wanting to get a little more rigid in our beliefs. You’ve got experiences that stack and help “prove something” to yourself, which, secret alert, you have your cognitive biases happening that will have you (consciously or unconsciously) search out and only notice consciously the things that agree with your beliefs and with your perception. So, you’ve got to really actively seek to be open-minded when something scratches you like I don’t believe that, or that’s different from you. That’s your opportunity to step into that and say, what can I learn from this or what can I gain from this or what interesting perspective can I take away from this? Because each time you do that, it’s like your brain bumps out a little bit more on each side and your mind gets a little bit wider and bigger, and you’re able to grow in that sense that Albert Einstein is indicating here.

Kay:

Let’s take this from a perspective that might be a little bit dark but that I think really illustrates the principle that he’s talking about here that when you get opened up to this new idea, the brain really never, the mind, (he doesn’t say the brain), the mind never returns to its original size meaning you can’t really un-learn those things. You can’t un-think them. I think this is why extreme violence gives people post-traumatic stress disorder because you can’t forget those things. It changes you forever. Just like how this summer really learning how deeply rooted racism is in the system of our country has changed me personally forever. Shila already knew it because she’s a sociologist and this is part of her study, but I had no idea how ingrained it was. I cannot, once you’ve seen it…

Kay & Shi:

You can’t un-see it!

Shi:

That totally reminds me of me sitting in Sociology 101 and having those revelations for the first time and going through courses and learning about class, race, and gender and the intersectionalities of oppression and it’s shocking how much there is. But my mind was seeing that there was no unseeing of it there. So, there are definitely opportunities for all of us to have a little bit more expansion when it comes to our mind and let it grow bigger than its original size because that’s the intention. It’s to have that motion of growth, especially when it comes to our mind and our ideas and what it is that we know.

Kay:

Well, we want to have that expansion and if you can be intentional about creating positive expansion, you can open your mind up in ways that you never would have believed in the past. So, as Albert Einstein tells us, “The mind that opens up to a new idea never returns to its original size.”

Shi:

Alright, you’ve got your Einstein Quest today. I wish I could make an Einstein sound, but I don’t know what that would be…Genius sound? Alright, your quest today is to set the intention to see something from the perspective of somebody other than yourself. Maybe it’s asking the opinion of a colleague at work or your parent or your sibling, or maybe even your kids at home, or even the perspective of a podcast hosted by a couple of blonde sisters. Are you ready?

Kay & Shi:

Let’s quest!