During the initial days of driving there are things you cant help noticing.
Why are there so many gears?
Why do they make it so complicated by introducing the ‘clutch’?
Wont a brake and accelerator do?
Then again, haven't we noticed how little time we have to do anything. By the time you get to the 4th gear for smooth cruising, those damned obstacles ahead ask you to start the down-them routine. If you decide that 3rd gear is all you need, you don't get beyond 20 km/hr. Decide to track or manage the gears, you lose control of the wheel. In short you don’t even realize that your mind is only capable of processing a FIFO at a time. Well, let us not humiliate ourselves by bringing up subtler aspects like ‘half-clutch’ brakes or the zen of night riding in a downpour.
But after a year or so, (well! if you are not 50+) you find the time between flipping those gears has suddenly expanded. Somehow, you now sense the engine's response and your body responds with right gear. You realize you talk , sing and even steal a glance sideways while your wheel is steady; your feet move without your mind. Its all automatic and 'Half-Clutch' is now a natural state of being.
How does time expand between the same events that happened a year before? How does one become so quick at multitasking? Improved reflexes but how? Nothing really changed at a material level. The same car, the same road and the same contextual inputs! Yet, your skill now relegates it to an efficient background daemon.
Analyze? Well, the eye still needs to pick up the sight of moving obstacles but instead of our mind (analyzing to decided on a response)->(checking the current gear & speed)->(brain directing the body to flip gears)->(Steer the wheel)->(Switch indicator).........
We now understand its only because we are able to respond at another time & space plane that we continue to drive sanely. The mind has become so quick that there is 'infinite time' between the same events to respond. One look at the context, the most accurate response is selected and executed without any logical analysis interfering. Over the year, numerous reflexes or programmed responses have been tested and perfected. Now we just trust them. The correct reflex program is selected and executed in background. Simple. There is no more mind involved. Time is not lost in analyzing and verifying. So it is now free to steal that sideways glance! Suddenly you start noticing those extra 'seconds' between the time to switch gears :)
Time expands in no mind zone.
We can find similar programs everywhere. Like typing the keyboard without looking. It is programmed and mastered as a reflex routine that the body (mind/fingers) executes spontaneously as words take shape in mind. Instead, if the mind were to (analyze) ->(bring up the image of the keyboard)->(ascertain the key position) every time we draft a letter, we would be severely impaired. Why, even simple handwriting is such mastered reflexes. Breathing? All the involuntary motions of the body? Programmed and moved aside so that our stupid mind does not analyze to slow it down.
That brings us to to 'skill' and 'talent'. Ever seen Gilchrist time a six off a ball, traveling at 100 miles/hr to perfection? It cannot be taught or analyzed by a conventional means. Surely he did not see that ball delivered at so close a distance as 22 yards and 100 miles/hr! How did he judge the trajectory and time his body (bat is only a part of the body) to perfection. The eye cannot even catch such a ball in flight. Either its a fluke or perhaps, he (i.e. his body) simply knew even before the ball was delivered, its trajectory! That's not taught. That's learned. By the body. Fine tuned by hours of practice. To pick up, signals, as strange as the look of the bowler or perhaps feel the wind , hear the bounce. Sensitivity. Sensibility. Amplified beyond normal ranges to pick up and differentiate inputs that normal mortals cannot.
So then, skill is when your sensitivity/sensibility is amplified a thousand times to differentiate and identify the right inputs and speed, is when the right program or reflex is 'sensed' for the given input and executed in 'no mind'.
Then Time and space stands still. And you see magic.
There is magic everywhere.
We all write.
Some drive beautifully.
Few bat like Gilchrist.
I guess only the degree matters.
Why are there so many gears?
Why do they make it so complicated by introducing the ‘clutch’?
Wont a brake and accelerator do?
Then again, haven't we noticed how little time we have to do anything. By the time you get to the 4th gear for smooth cruising, those damned obstacles ahead ask you to start the down-them routine. If you decide that 3rd gear is all you need, you don't get beyond 20 km/hr. Decide to track or manage the gears, you lose control of the wheel. In short you don’t even realize that your mind is only capable of processing a FIFO at a time. Well, let us not humiliate ourselves by bringing up subtler aspects like ‘half-clutch’ brakes or the zen of night riding in a downpour.
But after a year or so, (well! if you are not 50+) you find the time between flipping those gears has suddenly expanded. Somehow, you now sense the engine's response and your body responds with right gear. You realize you talk , sing and even steal a glance sideways while your wheel is steady; your feet move without your mind. Its all automatic and 'Half-Clutch' is now a natural state of being.
How does time expand between the same events that happened a year before? How does one become so quick at multitasking? Improved reflexes but how? Nothing really changed at a material level. The same car, the same road and the same contextual inputs! Yet, your skill now relegates it to an efficient background daemon.
Analyze? Well, the eye still needs to pick up the sight of moving obstacles but instead of our mind (analyzing to decided on a response)->(checking the current gear & speed)->(brain directing the body to flip gears)->(Steer the wheel)->(Switch indicator).........
We now understand its only because we are able to respond at another time & space plane that we continue to drive sanely. The mind has become so quick that there is 'infinite time' between the same events to respond. One look at the context, the most accurate response is selected and executed without any logical analysis interfering. Over the year, numerous reflexes or programmed responses have been tested and perfected. Now we just trust them. The correct reflex program is selected and executed in background. Simple. There is no more mind involved. Time is not lost in analyzing and verifying. So it is now free to steal that sideways glance! Suddenly you start noticing those extra 'seconds' between the time to switch gears :)
Time expands in no mind zone.
We can find similar programs everywhere. Like typing the keyboard without looking. It is programmed and mastered as a reflex routine that the body (mind/fingers) executes spontaneously as words take shape in mind. Instead, if the mind were to (analyze) ->(bring up the image of the keyboard)->(ascertain the key position) every time we draft a letter, we would be severely impaired. Why, even simple handwriting is such mastered reflexes. Breathing? All the involuntary motions of the body? Programmed and moved aside so that our stupid mind does not analyze to slow it down.
That brings us to to 'skill' and 'talent'. Ever seen Gilchrist time a six off a ball, traveling at 100 miles/hr to perfection? It cannot be taught or analyzed by a conventional means. Surely he did not see that ball delivered at so close a distance as 22 yards and 100 miles/hr! How did he judge the trajectory and time his body (bat is only a part of the body) to perfection. The eye cannot even catch such a ball in flight. Either its a fluke or perhaps, he (i.e. his body) simply knew even before the ball was delivered, its trajectory! That's not taught. That's learned. By the body. Fine tuned by hours of practice. To pick up, signals, as strange as the look of the bowler or perhaps feel the wind , hear the bounce. Sensitivity. Sensibility. Amplified beyond normal ranges to pick up and differentiate inputs that normal mortals cannot.
So then, skill is when your sensitivity/sensibility is amplified a thousand times to differentiate and identify the right inputs and speed, is when the right program or reflex is 'sensed' for the given input and executed in 'no mind'.
Then Time and space stands still. And you see magic.
There is magic everywhere.
We all write.
Some drive beautifully.
Few bat like Gilchrist.
I guess only the degree matters.
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