The reason why I am going to share this story with you is because I think it's important to share, for one, and also because I want you to consider and be encouraged by the following three concepts I present below.
What I Hope You To Take Away From Me
1) The power of the brain reactor is mighty in you, whether you like it or not
2) Be on guard for negative stimulants, especially nagging men and/or women
3) Stay true, bold, and courageous no matter what threatens your confidence
The brain is a beautiful phenomenon, a matrix of wires so complex that neurologists today still struggle to decipher many of its mysteries. This approximately three pound mass is a machine, a powerful force driven by stimulations that often are illustrated in what looks to an artist such as myself as an electrically wired constellation made of billions of neurons actively communicating to one another in trillions of synapses, which are the connections between those mighty neurons you hardly will ever think about that look like electric currents. Brain development occurs within the first 25 years of human life, growth occurring from the back of your brain to the front of your brain where the frontal lobes, responsible for planning and reasoning, strengthen and structure these neuron connections as a last process. The brain is one of the most important organs you have, with a storage capacity known to be virtually unlimited. For those of you thinking you run fast, your brain is laughing. Your brain runs at about 268 miles per hour! Not only this but your brain is like a light bulb, generating about 20 watts of power. Yes, your brain is a generator but not only. In summary, your brain reactor a concept which I use only for the purposes to illustrate a point is the circuited connection that triggers impulses. Pleasures as well as displeasures are linked to the brain and to this brain reactor which is capable of triggering reactions less than 1 minute post stimulation. In other words, your responses to stimuli can be evident within seconds to minutes of stimulation. Why this is important, I think for all of us, is when we study why we react the way we do, why we think the way we do, why we live the way we do, why we choose the way we choose, etc. This is your day to day life experience we are talking about here, how you react to others be it people or events, and any other stimulations whether internal or external. But I am not writing this to give you a lesson on brain development, you will need to go to an expert for that or take a class in neurology. However, I do recognize the brain's incredible power in our lives and appreciate how truly fragile our lives are in connection to our brains. I am, however, going to share a story. And I hope the story here touches your own life in a positive way. My whole adult life, I was in love with books. Being exposed to different genres and allowing myself the privilege to learn from different concepts and phenomena provided me with not only cognitive stimulation at optimum levels but a pull of knowledge from which to draw understanding about life itself and my environment. From books on history and poetry to those on art and children's literature, books have been a great part of my life. There are many reasons as to why children's books appeal to me so much. Some of the reasons include: a love for children, a childhood in which reading was a very influential and active practice being that my father was an avid reader, a love of innocence and the innocent, the fact that I never had children, being like a child myself always ready to absorb knowledge and learn. In addition, being an artist and writer, via which expression and story telling became a life long companion to me, is a core part of who I am. But children's books have not been my only passion. My favorite books include history, art, psychology, science, fables and poetry. In fact, the first book I had ever written was the poetry book you see below that touches on subjects stretching from love to corruption, childhood, power of self, courage, strength, morality, and many other subjects including the love of trains and animals. It is a book of hope in humanity that came to the public in a crucial time in our history, considering the impact Covid had on all of our lives. But now it's time to tell you a story about Mr. X.
This past weekend, a man, for the purpose of respecting his identity let's call him Mr. X, approached me by asking me: "About your second book, children's book you are putting out. How do you publish a book when you don't have children and you never had children?" He then went on to justify his criticism with: "Wouldn't you say that's like somebody reading a book on aviation, on how to fly a plane, and then jumping into the cockpit?" Keep in mind that Mr. X doesn't know me, other than from a paragraph or two he read about me. Of course, Mr. X criticized based on a single assumption that is flawed and that is that humans without children cannot write children's books. His comparison analysis between writing skills and piloting skills was not a valid comparison for several motives. However, his inability to reason well via logic and him bringing negativity into my life, was not something I was going to just ignore. Despite that Mr. X went on to give me praise and acknowledged my talent, with "I applaud you on your publishing career. I was not insulting you. You cannot have a battle of wits with an unarmed man. You're very talented with words." his initial message to me was ignorant, unreasoned, and negative. Please realize that people will often come into your life to nag you simply out of them feeling insecure themselves. External and internal stimuli act like a trigger, for many people leading them to act without consideration towards others, belittle or wrongly criticize others, and even practice a fallacy. A fallacy is defined as a failure in reasoning which renders an argument invalid or a mistaken belief, especially one based on unsound argument. This often happens because people are too quick to judge and not quick enough to stop and reason prior to judgment.
My brain went instantly into activity. What Mr. X proposed I had to make sense of and that was the first reaction of my brain reactor. When people throw comments at you that are nagging, your first reaction should be to reason. People should sit in silence and think about what was said, whether it was true and whether it consisted of sound judgment, or was it just a statement made by someone who truly did not take enough time to think before he/she spoke. Mr. X's criticism was a fallacy I was going to prove to him why it was so, not for the purpose of winning a battle, not to prove that he was wrong, so much as to stand for the truth. "Mr. X - You were a child once right? I think the answer is yes. What do you need to talk about a subject? Knowledge and experience, you would say right? Well, wasn't one's childhood years (the most important years to human development) enough of experience? Maybe for you not but for someone else it might had been. Why do you perform the fallacy to think that only those having children are equipped with the intellect and talent to write children's books? That is a big fallacy. For one, it takes intellect and talent to write a good children's book not having kids. I know many parents who wouldn't even attempt to perform the task as they consider themselves incapable of it. Second, all of us were children once and to some extent we are still children today just with bigger and more developed hopefully brains, spiritual awareness, and physical abilities. Third, many authors of children's books were the best of uncles and aunts, step-mothers or step-fathers, even adoptive parents more exemplary, in some instances, than the parents themselves. And several of the men and women who truly left an impact on society that wrote books never had children because they couldn't, or their partner was not a good/fit one to have children with, and/or simply they saw too much atrocity in the world and, let's just say, made a conscious decision it was not for them. So, I believe your criticism is not only invalid but truly does not take into account the truth. If you went to tell Tesla, for example, that he could not be a perfect husband because he was never married he would laugh. The first thing he would probably tell you is 'There is no such thing as a perfect husband.' Your logic would not be applicable because he was a man dedicated to a cause and chose (by his rightful right of human) that marriage was not for him. Very likely, not because of desire but because of cause and consequence of his reality and the complexities of what that represented for him. Lastly, you might be sitting in a box yourself, (though you accused me of sitting in the box of the "professional" criticizing also my professional ambitions) to ask me what you did. I would ask myself if perhaps social dogmas were what created that box for you that you would think that only parents can write children's books. As for someone reading a book on aviation, on how to fly a plane and then jump into a cockpit, that actually happened believe it or not. However, to think that the knowledge alone attained from reading the book on flying would not be enough to jump into the cockpit is the same as saying that the writer of a children's book is not equipped with enough 'experience' to write a children's book. This is according to you. That would only be a somewhat logical comparison if the writer was writing a book on parenting, even that I would have a lot to say about. So your point is invalid. The children's book is one about right and wrong, justice, love, patterns of social dogmas (aka 'boxes' as you called them). It is not a book on parenting. Thus, your assumptions are not fair or sound. I say this respectfully. My children's book is a lovely Christmas children's book with a beautiful message. So, in the end, I would be more careful about how you judge before you leap to judge. As for your remark 'You cannot have a battle of wits with an unarmed man,' this is one of the reasons why the world is so messed up. We come to others "unarmed" with the knowledge to question, we criticize before we know, and we make it sound like they are the ones in the wrong who we criticize harshly. It's not about being "armed" or "unarmed" Mr. X. It's about goodness and truth that I stand for. Once we learn to look at things truly for what they are and not for what they appear to be, our attitude will change."
I want to make this clear. I would not have wasted my time with Mr. X if it was not for the fact that I thought his assumption was wrong and would it not be that I actually appreciated his challenge simply since it had a lot to teach him also. I was flattered but respectfully addressed my reasoning. After all, Mr. X, very likely is struggling with something as we all are. He is a concerned, good father with his own kids trying to keep them from the television box or Xbox which he shared with me not something which I inquired upon. Though I would, sincerely, not want him to tell his kids someday they cannot be writers of children's books simply because they might not be willing or able to be parents. That could destroy his children's true potential and their confidence in attaining dreams despite that we are all capable of great things. Nonetheless, I realize, that we as people need to be careful before we speak, especially since you consider how much is being thrown into our brains on a daily basis. With social media, be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, other media outlets, and not to mention other people, it can all get to be too much. Reasoning can fall off the wagon. It is us that keep it from falling off.
If I was to listen to someone like Mr. X above, however, I would have never realized my dream to publish a book on poetry or to complete my first children's book which I both wrote and illustrated while my beloved mother was visiting me from Romania last Christmas. And this is just my beginning, I plan to write and continue to practice my art in the future to come. What I want you to take with you is the following. There will be people who will come in your life to show support, uplift you, and cheer you to follow your ambitions and dreams. Those are the people you want around and you want to associate with. On the other hand, unfortunately, there will always be people that will throw negativity your way usually not because of anything wrong with you or what you did but because of motives not associated with you, be it their own insecurities, their quick to judgment tendencies, or their own battles they are struggling with. Recognize that, and if you choose to pick your battle state your reasoning and then move on. Here are my theories which serve as hopefully good reminders to you and some practices I recommend that may come helpful to you.
Reminder 1:
My Theory: The power of the brain reactor is mighty in you, whether you like it or not
My Practice: Learn how to make reason your first reaction of your brain reactor
Reminder 2:
My Theory: Be on guard for negative stimulants, especially nagging men and/or women My Practice: Learn how to identify threats to your well-being such as negative stimuli
Reminder 3:
My Theory: Stay true, bold, and courageous no matter what threatens your confidence My Practice: No matter what anyone says about or to you, do not lose your confidence
Your dreams, your goals, your whatever it is you wish to achieve are YOURS. Own them by not letting anyone's negativity crumble your confidence. Carmen A. Cisnadean
My first children's book is currently under production and we are aiming to bring it to the public in November of this year. It is a story about love, doing the right thing, justice, "boxes" one in particular that serves as a cats-motel, and so much more... it is a heartfelt Christmas story about a cool detective too, one I think many will love... More to come.
And as one final reminder as per my statement above
Reasoning can fall off the wagon. It is us that keep it from falling off.
Carmen A. Cisnadean
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