Naptime of the Mind

SPOILER ALERT: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Earlier this week I saw that movie. As anticipated it was thought provoking and full of Brad Pitt hotness. If he ages the way the exquisite make up implies we have some very lip licking years to enjoy long into the future.

The film is about a man who is born old with a young mind and a body that ages backwards throughout his life. It illustrates the mental similarities of youth and old age. The physical and mental contrast makes that easier to notice and digest though it is something that most of us experience.

So, as I begged my friends who saw the film with me, if I get dementia in old age, please don't dump me in a decaying nursing home. When that happens (good morning lack of optimism) I have a feeling that I'll spend a lot of the day napping just to pass the time. What else will there be to do? I guess I could develop a soap opera addiction to permanently kill of any lively brain cells.

Why am I obsessing over the mental fuzziness that accompanies old age and extreme youth? It reminded me of the fogginess of dreaming. Most of us remember our dreams vaguely as if we experienced a waking moment. For a short time they make sense (in the it is entirely realistic that my cat is driving the car kind of way). Or at least they give us a sense of thinking through problems and running through our everyday experience.

But then there is nothing--deep sleep where it is a blank. Emily is gone; switched off and not responding to my own thoughts. Yes yes the body needs the recharge and likely the brain does too. But doesn't it freak you out that for that time you are gone. You cease to exist in your own mind.

Will I cease to exist in old age? What does dementia feel like? Benjamin Button's story cracked open a window:

Will our last years leave our minds vacillating:
Awake, then asleep--but a sleep without dreaming.

When will we sleep permanently with a slowly breathing body?