LIFE + PSYCHOLOGY
Against All Odds
Is Phil Collins singing about our brain?
So take a look at me now, well there’s just an empty space
And there’s nothin’ left here to remind me, just the memory of your face
Now take a look at me now, ‘cos there’s just an empty space
But to wait for you, is all I can do and that’s what I’ve got to face
Take a good look at me now, ‘cos I’ll still be standin’ here
And you coming back to me is against all odds
It’s the chance I’ve gotta take — Against All Odds by Phil Collins
I’m not the standard romantic. “Head-in-the-clouds”, “starry-eyed”, “dreamer”, “visionary”, “hopeful” these are words associated with being romantic. I am not someone who thinks about love and who shows strong feelings for it toward someone in public. I mean, I do try in my own odd ways. My friends often tease me that if those words are the definitions of a romantic, then I am as good as a brick in the wall smeared with cow dung. I take that as a compliment.
I am, however, a staunch believer in miracles.
When my gal pals debate whether Rose and Jack in the 1997 movie Titanic could have shared the plank and survived their love, or whether Francesca should have followed Robert in the 1992 best-selling novel The Bridges of Madison County, my attention is with American Christian dramas that feature individuals who flatlined, went to heaven and came back a changed person. Or, who saw Jesus and came back with powers to heal others.
Growing up I was unimpressed with movies that spoke of love between a man and a woman (to avoid being pronoun-insensitive, I stress between two individuals). I was more transfixed with the premise of an individual versus the Impossible, typically something bigger than ourselves, almost supernatural. Against all odds is not just a Phil Collins hit love song, but there is something haunting about extraordinary events attributed to a divine agency that associate well with Collins’ self-penned lyrics.
I’m not talking about mother-in-laws or “dysfunctional families” kind of Impossible. I’m talking about pushing the frontiers of our belief systems, defying the odds “when everyone else had given up on you” type of Impossible. I find it thrilling, mystifying and enigmatic. Perhaps this is why I enjoy watching supernatural-thrillers late into the night with a bag of salted chips. But I won’t go into that.
I’m also not talking about Jesus-turning-water-into-wine type of miracle, but more like Miracle in the Andes where 16 people from Uruguay who have never seen or touched snow, survive a plane crash, live for 72 days below -30 degrees Celsius at 3,575 meters above sea level eating corpses, and live to be rescued.
The story was made into a movie in 1993 — Alive starring Ethan Hawke — based on a book written by one of the sixteen survivors Fernando Parrado titled Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home.
“I shouldn’t be talking to you. I should be dead. Buried in a glacier 50 years ago,” Parrado describes in an interview. “In civilization, I might have broken down in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to get up, but I didn’t have the time for that. My mind only allowed me to focus on fighting the cold, the hunger, the fear, the uncertainty.”
Despite the trauma and ordeal losing both his mother and sister in the crash alongside his best friends, Parrado says he wouldn’t change a thing. “Compared to what we lived through, hell is a comfortable place, but changing the past would mean not having the family I have now. Thinking about the past is insane.”
Now that’s what I’m talking about. David versus Goliath, not Samson and Delilah.
It was a semester at university studying Psycholinguistics when I discovered a miracle within us. It’s called the human brain.
My professor presented case studies that demonstrated the plasticity of our neurological system. She explained how our understanding of the world was shaped by our linguistic aptitude, but something else caught my attention — the mapping of the brain itself.
Dr. Jordan Grafman is a research scientist in the area of neuroplasticity. He specializes in memory research, traumatic brain injury and its rehabilitation. Grafman is one who believes in miracles. Lucky for us, he works hard to provide scientific evidence to show when a brain suffers necrosis (death of cells) it has the ability to rebuild in new sectors and recover. I get goosebumps just thinking about this.
In 1977, while in graduate school, Grafman was introduced to Renata, an African-American woman who had been strangled in an assault in Central Park (in New York City) and left for dead. She suffered an anoxic injury, a neuronal death when the attack had cut off oxygen to the brain long enough to cause serious and permanent damage. After five years, doctors reached a dead end.
Her hippocampus was so severely injured she was wheelchair bound, had memory problems, and could barely read. She lost her job and her friends. She was told her brain will continue to deteriorate. Renata had nothing else to live for but to spiral into depression. At the time, doctors said, once a brain is damaged, it cannot recover.
Grafman had an idea: What if we teach the brain to learn all over again? What if we teach the brain to read like children in school? Grafman’s objective is to combine memory research and rehabilitation. Renata was given intensive training. This included thinking exercises that massaged specifically the areas of memory and reading.
Gradually, Renata regained mobility and started to communicate more. She did exercises that required her to remember day-to-day events. The parts of her brain that had died from oxygen deficiency were not only rehabilitated, new neurons were created in a different part of the brain. Eventually, Renata was able to go back to school, get a job, and reenter the world.
Renata’s unfortunate incident re-educated her doctors about the brain’s plasticity. There was never a dead end. They only needed to reframe and redesign their outlook. They also underestimated the organ’s capabilities as well as Renata’s determination to coactivate with her own brain.
Today with better technology and clearer fMRI scan (functional magnetic resonance imaging), society is presented with new understanding of traumatic brain injury. What was formerly seen as a death sentence is now re-examined with hope and optimism. With practice and consistency, the brain has a tenacity to survive, reconstruct and recover.
I left the semester with a permanent impression. This impression is what engrave and emboss my romantic panorama. I realized one great miracle about the human brain: even when doctors and experts have given up on a patient, the brain doesn’t.
Our brain will find ways to facilitate the human body and heal the human spirit. It refuses to give in easily without a good fight, and it remains hopeful and idealistic with a vision on how the patient can reconcile and return to an improved quality of life.
It cannot, however, work alone. It needs a support system that equally believes in its magic and potency. That one is up to us. But who knew the brain is a lover and a fighter?
Now that’s true love. The brain, I think, is the sappiest romantic of us all.
If you enjoyed this, there is a sequel:
