We are all so lucky that, in 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor had a life threatening stroke. It took her 7 years to regain all her mental capacity. I wouldn't wish this on anyone, but--if it had to happen to someone--we're fortunate that it happened to her.
This was the perfect combination of stroke and victim. The stroke was unusual in that it shut down the entire left hemisphere of her brain and did no damage to her right hemisphere. As a result, Jill was able to see the world purely from the point of view of her right brain. This right brain can't speak, but it is a master of non-verbal communication. It can't reason, but it is the source of intuition. It can't imagine the past or the future, but it dwells in the eternal present. It has no concept of "self"; it doesn't know the words "I am". Instead, it sees no separation between itself and its surroundings. To the right brain, all reality is interconnected. It has no goals, but it is therefore carefree. In her book, "My Stroke of Insight", Jill describes the 2-1/2 weeks that she was wide awake but unable to think or understand the spoken word as Nirvana. Peace. An exhilarating mystical connection with everything in life. Complete absorption in the eternal now.
What made Jill the perfect victim for this perfect stroke was her background and her personality. She was a brain scientist--a nueroanatomist at Harvard University. She already was an expert, region by region, on the differences between the left brain and the right brain. She already knew that the left brain was verbal and was the location for all ideas such as "I am a brain scientist. My name is Jill. My body ends here and then the rest of the world starts." She already knew that the right brain was the source of emotional intelligence, intuition, creativity, and that the right brain has no concept of past and future. So she had the expertise to explain to us in her book exactly what was going on in her brain when her consciousness shifted to the right and during her 7 years of recovering left brain functioning.
Her personality also made her the perfect victim for this stroke. In the riveting chapter where she describes the first 4 hours of her stroke, she recalls when she first realized that she was having a life threatening stroke. She said,
Oh my gosh, I'm having a stroke! I'm having a stroke! Wow, this is so cool! Wow, how many scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain function and mental deterioration from the inside out?
The real question is: how many scientists would realize they could die and would find it "cool" and fascinating? Jill's enthusiasm and passion for understanding what is happening to her even during the stroke and the years of painstaking recovery are characteristics of her personality that made her the perfect victim for this perfect stroke. Nobody else could have given us the gift of the story she tells us in her book. Only she could have experienced this and come back to teach the rest of us so much about how our minds work.
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