What art-ful meditation does to a scientist

4 minute read

I was helping a friend with her personal statement for med school when I came across a very interesting word document in my old grad school application folders. It was interesting because I could not remember writing something with this title back in 2008 - what art-ful meditation does to a scientist! Although I am not surprised. I was at the stage where I was doing both - arts/humanities and science and it was time for decision-making. I was quite excited to read what I was thinking at that time and see how this panned out. And I must confess, half way through I was thinking this must make its way onto the blog. There was only one problem. When I reached the end, it wasn’t finished. The last sentence does not have a full stop. There was a thought and it either got interrupted, or it was a computer glitch and my slick black mac at that time didn’t save my work. Not unusual, but upsetting. Over the past 24 hours, I kept thinking whether I should finish that thought. Whether I should add something at the end to make it more clear of where I was leading to. This would be a new me commenting or finishing the old me. I thought about it. it would be interesting. And I do have some thoughts. But for the sake of art and the effect it would have on the curious mind, I will leave it open. I am inviting you all to finish it up. What’s your end of the argument here?

Just a theory…

There is no place like home. I do love my country a whole lot, and I am very proud of being Moldovan, speaking Romanian and Russian as a default, singing all these marvelous songs, loving the flute and all the other instruments, the national costume and the wine and dances, everything… but life has proved some other things to me too. Although I have a strong connection with the place I was born in, I developed a theory that explains my state of mind everywhere I go including my home country.

There is no place like home, but places like you. This new configuration of an old saying can be interpreted in all ways that come to one’s mind, but here is what I have in mind. Every person has a vibration with a certain wavelength. I mean every one of us has a different intensity of connection to the world and the surroundings, a different intensity of showing love and happiness, smiling, laughing and crying. Essentially, we all have same feelings, but we express them with different intensities, this is what I will call vibration. That is vibez in Trinidad or anywhere else too. Now, beside each individual possessing vibez, I believe that every country has either a general vibe that is peculiar only to the place, or this general vibe is taken as the predominant one amongst its people.

I understand the vibration of a place in two ways. First, it is the way most people that live there are, and, second, it could be a wavelength of acceptance. I will explain.

If we go by the first explanation, then a person and a place or region or country will click, if he or she has the vibez close to the wavelength of the majority of people living there, or in a certain defined interval of proximity. When someone is born, it is very probable that his or her vibez will be in the range of most people born there. Therefore, the person clicks with his or her motherland. That is when one believes with great certainty that there is no place like home. It is that closeness, that vibration you are feeling not only inside but outside too, everywhere. You feel yourself everywhere. You are you and there is nothing to disprove or tell you otherwise. It’s in the air! You vibrate with your environment at the same pace and that is what makes you feel comfortable and alive.

According to this explanation, wherever you find a vibration of the country or place with yours, that is, where you will click and, consequently will love the place. However, I believe that there cannot be more than one place at a time with which you can click. Yet, it is possible that over your lifetime you could click with more than one place and here is why.

Nothing is constant. Vibrations can change their wavelength if they hit something or are disturbed. It’s Physics. There is no perfectly isolated environment. Everyone and every place as well, will, therefore, be exposed. Change is inevitable.

The tendency is to change in the direction of the general vibration of the country because it’s that of most people