Limitless

Of the same name, a movie and a TV series reinforce people’s desire to “unlock” things and to “access” previously limited areas in general. Like a palpable desire to taste whatever object as a kid, or to explore previously unknown areas of the world, we want to unlock the secrets of the human brain and exceed one’s limitations alongside every other person’s expectations.

Some people search the universe or the depths of the seas, but the clinical aspect of my profession delves into the depths of the human person. So long has it fascinated me that it has painted a behavior right into my interaction with the world.

You see here in Washington DC, where I am currently on summer vacation in, the museums, specifically the Smithsonian museums, are free. From the museum of Natural History, the zoo and the Air and Space Museum, all museums and their exhibits are absolutely free. Past a stringent security check asking patrons to “Put ya’ll bags and keys and wallets and phones to these here containers then walk through them metal Dee-tecters”, people can view dinosaur bones, moon stones and Egyptian tombs without coughing up any sum of cash.

Mind you, these museums are huge. They are kilometers long placed flat together and each exhibit could well be an hour or so long if you stop at everything. See, no sane brain, especially typical non-photographic memory branded brains, could have interpreted and memorized all these information that these 4cm x 4 cm cardboard plates were presenting. I then realized that what I had to do was just look at them, storing them in the deep subconscious. A pretend snapshot using minimal brain cells. I find myself doing this because of a belief that there would come a time when a drug can help us access the stuff in the brain we had, and I was silently depositing mini facts to know when that day comes.

Oh how I wish NZT (the drug from the movie) was real. Like a cheat for learning. Haha.

Oh but I did enjoy walking around those museums though.